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

Wheeler-Beecher House (1807)

Noted architect David Hoadley designed the house at 562 Amity Road in Bethany for Darius Beecher (1768-1833). Built in 1807, the house is considered a major example of the Federal style in New England, both in its exterior and interior detailing. It had a number of owners in the nineteenth century, including Abraham Beecher, who sold it to John Thomas, who then gave it to his son Lewis Thomas as a wedding present. Next it was owned by Orrin Wheeler, whose family retained it until 1899. The house was owned for a time in the twentieth century by Huntington Lee and his sister Josephine B. Lee, who added a wing on the south side where the Gale Electric Company made lamps and reproduced antiques. For a brief period in the early 1940s the wing was occupied by William Edwin Rudge, who published a graphic arts magazine called Print. The cover of Volume II, Nos. 3 & 4 (December 1941) featured an illustration of the house by Hugo Steiner-Prag. There also exists an etching of the house by John Taylor Arms entitled “Old Hoadley House, Home of “Print,” Bethany, Connecticut.”

699 Tolland Stage Road, Tolland (1892)

The house at 699 Tolland Stage Road in Tolland was built c. 1792. According to Around and About the Tolland Green (2002) by Christine Gray, a resident of the house was a Dr. Brace, an apothecary whose medicine bottles are on display at the Old Tolland County Jail and Museum.

16 Tolland Green (1776)

For the Fourth of July, here is a saltbox house at 16 Tolland Green in Tolland that was built in 1776. One known resident of the house was a man named Winters. According to Around and About the Tolland Green (2002) by Christine Gray, he was a proprietor of the County House, the hotel attached to the Tolland County Jail, whose wife refused to live at the jail.

Prospect Congregational Church (1941)

In 1778, residents of the area around what is now Prospect Green withdrew from the Congregational church in Cheshire and formed their own ecclesiastical society, known as the Columbia Society. Their meeting house was located on the Prospect Green, which is the highest inhabited elevation in New Haven County. The Prospect Congregational Society was formally established in 1798 and continued meeting in the original simple structure until a new edifice was erected in 1841, to the west of the Green. The previous meeting house was moved to a another site nearby where it was used by the Methodist church until 1858. After a fire destroyed the 1841 building, a new fieldstone church was erected. This too was destroyed by fire and was replaced by the current church, built in 1941.

Frederick Bulkeley House (1825)

The Greek Revival house at 118 Broad Street, across from Broad Street Green in Wethersfield, was built by Frederick Bulkeley in 1825. The Greek Revival house has later nineteenth-century stylistic alterations. Frederick’s son Stephen Bulkeley later built an Italianate house next door.

Benjamin Bulkeley House (1792)

Benjamin Bulkeley was the cousin of Capt. Charles Bulkeley, who built the impressive gambrel-roofed house at 56 Broad Street Green in Wethersfield. Benjamin built his own house at 106 Broad Street c. 1792. The house has later nineteenth-century alterations.

Smith Brothers Carriage Shop (1868)

The single-story brick structure at 9 State Street in North Haven once served as the Smith Brothers carriage parts factory. The nomination document for the Pines Bridge Historic District gives the building a date of 1868, although the North Haven Historical Society website says it was built in 1846 by John F. Bronson, possibly as a match factory, and was acquired by the Smith Brothers in 1856. Because of a plaque found in the building engraved “Runaway Hole” it has been speculated that it was part of the Underground Railroad. Around the turn-of-the-century Angelo Ghiselli acquired the property, which became a restaurant. It was next used as apartments and is now a private residence.