Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Former Bean Hill Methodist Church (1833)

Methodists in Norwich first organized in 1796. They built the city’s first Methodist Episcopal Church in the Bean Hill neighborhood in 1831-1833. As explained by Edgar F. Clark in The Methodist Episcopal Churches of Norwich, Conn. (1867):

The name of the Church Society, as appears in the minutes, was first called “Norwich;” in 1834, “Norwich North,” which appellation it has very generally retained. In local conversation, it is often called “Bean Hill,” from its locality.

Before erecting their church, the Society met in the Old Academy building, as described in Frances Manwaring Caulkins’ History of Norwich (1874):

The Methodist society on Bean Hill for many years held their public services in the venerable building which had served successively and alternately for a classical academy, a free school, and a Separatist conventicle. In this extemporized chapel, many of the early noted itinerants preached in their rounds. Here Lee, Asbury, and other messengers of the church, proclaimed their message. Here Maffit delivered one of the first of his flourishing effusions on this side of the water. When the eccentric Lorenzo Dow was to preach, the bounds were too narrow, and the audience assembled in the open air, upon the hill, under the great elm.

The present Methodist church on the hill was erected in 1833.

The church was altered in 1879 (the current pediments above the pair of blue doors date to that alteration). The congregation moved out of the building in the twentieth century (c. 1960) and it was then unsympathetically remodeled as a furniture store and is now a photography studio.

Jesse Brown Tavern (1790)

Jesse Brown’s house in Norwich, at 77 East Town Street, facing Norwichtown Green, was licensed as a tavern and stage coach stop in 1790. President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams were guests at the Tavern on August 1, 1797. The Tavern was sold to William Williams of New London in 1814. Captain Bela Peck owned it from 1817 until his death in 1850. The next owner, Moses Pierce, bought the building in 1855. He gave it to the United Workers of Norwich to be used as a home for poor and orphaned children. It was called the Rock Nook Home, which is today part of United Community & Family Services.

Rowayton Community Center and Library (1912)

The building which know houses the Rowayton Community Center in Norwalk was originally built in 1912 as the carriage house and stables for the Rock Ledge estate. The estate’s original mansion, built on the other side of Highland Street in 1911, burned down and was rebuilt in 1913. The carriage house and U-shaped stables wings are constructed with a rough stone first floor and a half-timbered upper story with jerkinhead roofs in the Tudor Revival style.

The Community Center also houses the Rowayton Library. After an brief early attempt to establish a library in Rowayton in 1867, locals established what would become today’s Rowayton Library in 1903. Originally located in the former Craw Store, Craw Hall, at 101 Rowayton Avenue, the library moved into the former home of the Rowayton Fire Department in 1926 and finally into the former stables in the 1960s.

Silvermine Tavern (1810)

Happy Thanksgiving!
When the historic Silvermine Tavern, located in the Silvermine section of Norwalk, closed in 2009, it was the end of an 80 year local institution. Several buildings make up the original Silvermine Tavern complex, including an old mill with origins in the seventeenth century, a coach house and a gatehouse that has since been attached to the main Tavern building. This structure has a plaque indicating that it was built c. 1810 as the Joseph Cocker Cotton Factory. Cocker’s business was an expensive undertaking and when he passed away unexpectedly in 1812 he left an estate that was heavily in debt. His widow Sally died the following year and Stephen Abbott acquired the property, but he too fell into debt and sold it in 1816 to his son. By that time the building had had new wings constructed for living quarters and a weaving shop. The factory continued on under various owners until, including David Comstock, who manufactured hats, until it was acquired in the 1850s by Henry Guthrie, an immigrant from England who owned a shipyard and three water-powered mills. Guthrie produced knobs for doors and furniture and local girls sanded, varnished and packed them for shipping in what would become the Tavern’s living room.

Otto Goldstein purchased the building in 1906. He also owned the nearby Red Mill, built c. 1800, which he used for his fur processing business. Goldstein lived in the former factory where he also had a taproom where he sold drinks to the local community of Silvermine, which was then becoming an artists’ colony. With the repeal of Prohibition, J. Kenneth Byard bought the property in 1929 and named it the Silvermine Tavern, offering dining and overnight accommodations. Ownership of the Tavern passed to I.M. Weiss in 1948. The Whitman family operated it from 1955 until the restaurant closed in 2009. It then continued for a few years as a bed & breakfast.

In 2013-2014 the property was acquired by developer Andrew Glazer, who is currently redeveloping the site. He renovated the store to become his new office and the mill house (called the Red Mill, it once had a water wheel) next to the Tavern to become his residence. He also built four new houses and a community barn on the Tavern’s old parking lot, the profits from them to support the next phase of the project, which is to extensively modernize and eventually reopen the Tavern itself. The interior is being gutted and the restaurant adapted from the sprawling space that seated 200 to a new space that will seat 60. The picture above was taken in 2014, before the current renovation work on the main Tavern building began earlier this year.

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Essex National Bank (1873)

In 1873, the Saybrook Bank erected a new building on Main Street in Essex (its previous building, built in 1849, was taken over by the Essex Savings Bank). The Saybrook Bank was reorganized in 1907 as the Essex National Bank, which remodeled the front facade of the building in 1936-1937 to the appearance it has today. The bank later merged with other banks and today the building houses a branch of Liberty Bank.

Capt. Elisha Scott House (1785)

The house at 240 Main Street in Farmington was built in 1785 by Captain Elisha Scott (1732-1821), who served in the Revolutionary War. Elisha’s two sons inherited the house, with Hezekiah eventually selling his portion to his younger brother Erastus. In Farmington, Connecticut, The Village of Beautiful Homes (1906) is found the following description of Capt. Erastus Scott:

Erastus Scott, the grandson of the grandson of Edmund Scott, one of the settlers of the town, was born November 6, 1787. His house still stands on land belonging to his ancestor Edmund. He was unusually prominent in the public life of the village, filling the offices of First Selectman, First Assessor, Collector of Taxes, and Constable for a long term of years, indeed, his patriarchal sway embraced pretty much all matters of public utility. His popularity was unbounded and needed no help from the ways of modern politicians. He was universally known and addressed as Capt. Scott, a title more valued in the olden time than that of any doctorate, whether of laws, theology or philosophy. He died on June 28, 1873.

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Mary E. Woodward House (1910)

The house at 126 North Street in Watertown was built in 1910 for Mary E. Woodward, who bought the land in 1899. A primary school was located in the house for many years during its ownership, until 1940, of the Woodward family. At some point an owner of the house replaced the siding, stripping much of the original decorative trim.