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

Eliphalet Ladd House (1860)

At 1248 Poquonock Avenue in Windsor is an impressive Italianate villa-style home erected c. 1860. It was built for Eliphalet Ladd, a merchant who owned a store in Poquonock Center. Eliphalet Ladd (1822-1885) was the father of Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930), a noted scientist who made contributions in the fields of mathematics and psychology. Born in Windsor, she spent her first six years in New York before the family returned to Windsor in 1853. Following her mother’s death in 1860, her father remarried in 1862 and Christine was sent to live with her grandmother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She later attended Vassar and Johns Hopkins.

In 1960, the Eliphalet Ladd House was one of a number of locations in Windsor and East Windsor used in the Hollywood film Parrish (1961), which is set on a Connecticut tobacco farm.

Sally Keeney House (1840)

Ira Anderson, a prosperous farmer, built the house at 224 Naubuc Avenue on his land in Hockanum in East Hartford c. 1840 for Sally Keeney. In 1873 she sold it to Edmund A. Fox. The house has been much altered.

Hall-Starr House (1778)

Once thought to have been much older, the small house at 223 State Street in Guilford was probably built c. 1778 by Benjamin Hall. In 1803 he sold it to William Starr, whose family lived in it until 1995. A kitchen ell was added to the house around 1940.

Amasa Hitchcock House (1800)

The house at 1151 South Main Street in Cheshire was built c. 1790-1800. It was the home of Amasa Hitchcock (1739-1827), a veteran of the French & Indian War [not to be confused with another Amasa Hitchcock (1768-1835), Cheshire’s first post master, whose house on South Main Street is no longer standing]. The house remained in the Hitchcock family until 1975.

Robert N. Jackson Cottage (1882)

The summer cottage at 29 Pettipaug Avenue in the Borough of Fenwick in Old Saybrook was built in 1882 by Robert N. Jackson of Middletown. The son of Ebenezer Jackson, Jr. (1796-1874) of Savannah, Georgia, and Middletown, Robert Nesmith Jackson (1845-1915) organized and served as president of the Middlesex Banking Company. The bank failed in 1913. In 1920 the cottage was acquired by Mitchell Little of Hartford and his wife, Elizabeth Hapgood, daughter of the architect Edward T. Hapgood. You can read more about the cottage in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), pages 135-137.

Tate Block (1890)

The Tate Block, originally known as Tate’s Building, is a commercial block at 187-195 (aka 185) Bank Street in New London. It was built in 1890 on a site that was once the gardens of the neighboring Jonathan Starr House, built a century earlier.

Church of the Assumption, Ansonia (1907)

The first Catholic house of worship in Ansonia was a white frame chapel erected on Main Street in 1867-1868. It was named The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Starting as a mission of Derby, parish status was conferred in 1870. A new church, designed by architect Patrick C. Keeley, was later erected over eighteen years at 61 North Cliff Street. Ground was broken in 1889 and the cornerstone was put into place on Sunday, September 6, 1891. The basement chapel was completed and began to be used in 1900 (it was later remodeled to become the Church Hall in 1967). The completed edifice was dedicated in June 1907. The original plan called for a tower that was never built.