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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Frederick Gunn, founder of the Gunnery School in Washington, was also the founder, in 1852, of the Washington Library Association, of which he became president in 1855. In the 1880s the Library Association evolved into the Washington Reading Room & Circulating Library Association, which opened a reading room in 1891. E.H. Van Ingen pledged land and money toward erecting a permanent library building in 1902 and the completed building was dedicated in 1908. It was designed by noted architect Ehrick K.Rossiter, who had become a summer resident of Washington. The interior has ceiling murals by Washington resident H. Siddons Mowbray and bronze busts by English sculptor A. Bertram Pegram. The local DAR branch had opened a historical room in a nearby house in 1899. This collection was turned over to the library in 1907. Originally located in the library’s basement, the museum later collection moved to the adjacent house, bequeathed to the library by June S. Willis in 1965. A new 7,500 square foot addition, five times the size of the original library, was completed in 1994. The plans were drawn by King & Tuthill.
In 1832, Wakeman B. Meeker, Sr., a prosperous shipping merchant, acquired the old Bulkley residence at 824 Harbor Road in Southport. He formed the firm of Meeker & Sherwood with his partner, Simon Sherwood, in the 1830s and built a wharf and three warehouses across from his residence. They owned three schooners and seven sloops engaged in freight and passenger service. The firm later became W.B. Meeker & Son. Next to the Bulkley residence, Meeker erected a new house, 25 Westway Road, for his son c. 1850-1855. The front porch, decorated with highly ornamental sawed scrollwork, was added in 1891. After Meeker’s death in 1862, his son, Wakeman B. Meeker, Jr., carried on the business until his death in 1915.
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