Calvary St. George is an Episcopal parish in Bridgeport. St. George’s Parish was organized in 1892 with a church, first known as St. John’s West End Chapel, at the corner of Clinton and Beechwood Avenues. The current church was built in 1930 at the same location, 755 Clinton Avenue. Calvary Episcopal Church, once located at North Avenue and Wells Street, later at 510 Summit Street, merged with St. George’s in 2005.
The Stearns Building, at 73-77 Pratt Street in Hartford, was designed by an unknown architect and constructed in 1897. The Stearns family owned the property until 1942.
The factory building at 52 Main Street in Manchester was erected in 1904 by Frank Goetz, owner of a large commercial bakery he had established in the late nineteenth century south of Depot Square. Goetz erected the brick masonry structure to replace an earlier wood frame building that had housed his bakery until it was destroyed by fire in 1902. This earlier building is probably the one mentioned in a notice in the Building New Supplement, Vol. IX, no. 8 (August 25, 1888):
Frank Goetz, proprietor of the Vienna bakery, has broken ground for a commodious building for business purposes on Main street, at the corner of Hilliard street.
The wood structure burned on February 17, 1904, during the most severe snowstorm of the season. Almost as soon as the new building was finished, Goetz sold the property to the Carlyle Johnson Machine Company, manufacturers of friction clutches and marine gears, and moved his bakery to New Haven. Carlyle Johnson later moved to Bolton.
The large Colonial Revival house at 1420 Main Street in Glastonbury, which now contains medical offices, was built in 1911 for J. H. Hale (1853-1917). Known as the “Peach King,” John Howard Hale, with his brother George H. Hale, transformed the 200-year old Hale farm into a nationally-known peach-growing empire. He developed peach trees that could better withstand the northern climate. His accomplishments are described in Men of Mark in Connecticut (1906):
Mr. Hale is now sole owner and manager of the J. H. Hale’s Nursery and Fruit Farms at Glastonbury, president of the Hale Georgia Orchard Company, at Fort Valley, Georgia, and president and general manager of the Hale and Coleman Orchard Company at Seymour, Connecticut. He was the first American orchardist to sort, grade, and pack fruit, and label and guarantee it according to its grade. He was the first in America to use trolley transportation in the fruit business, and is one of the very few Americans who ship peaches to Europe. He is fittingly called the “Father of Peach Culture in New England.” Mr. Hale has also initiated many new ideas in fruit advertising. Another novel feature introduced by him is that of having an orchestra play in the packing rooms at the Georgia orchards. Aside from bettering and developing horticulture all over America, Mr. Hale has done a valuable service to his state in making many acres of so-called “abandoned” hill lands of Connecticut and New England to bloom with beautiful orchards.
[. . .]
Mr. Hale has written numerous articles on horticultural topics for the World’s Work, Country Life in America, and other periodicals. For twelve years he was associate editor of the Philadelphia Farm Journal, and for fifteen years he edited the agricultural column of the Hartford Courant. He has had important positions in the State Grange, and has sacrificed a great deal of time and money in strengthening that organization, being at the head of same from 1886 to 1890, and now chairman of the executive committee. He was also first president of the Glastonbury Business Men’s Association.
Hale also served as a state representative, during which time he played a role in forming the Storrs Agricultural College (now UCONN). You can read more about Hale in my post about the house of his grandfather, Ebenezer Hale.
Before being subdivided in the twentieth century, the land around the Woodruff House at 126 Woodruff Road in Farmington was farmland. Major Ozem Woodruff (1773-1849), who built the brick house around 1821, was a farmer who raised various livestock and operated a saw and grist mill. He also had an orchard and made gin, cider and brandy. In 1794 Ozem Woodruff married Martha Scott (1775-1843). Woodruff left Farmington in 1847 to join his oldest son Ozem in Louisiana. His youngest son George continued to run the farm in Farmington, which remained in the family into the twentieth century (c. 1934). The house has a large stone masonry addition dating to the twentieth century.
Nelson Cheffee was an architect who built a number of Greek Revival houses along Main Street in Ellington. Pictured above is the house at 108 Main Street, built in 1839. I’m not sure if the architect Nelson Chaffee is the Nelson E. Chaffee (1807-1870) who patented an improvement in drying machines in 1849. (more…)
Wheeler’s Island is one of the Thimble Islands, which are located in and around the harbor of Stony Creek in the southeast corner of Branford. Vacation homes, displaying a variety of architectural styles, are located throughout the archipelago. Not far off shore is Wheelers Island, first known as Page’s Island. In 1865 Henry B. Frisbie purchased the island from Alonson Hall and built a Victorian cottage with an Italianate cupola. Frank Wheeler of Meriden, an avid yachtsman, acquired the island in 1885 and the Wheeler family owned it until 1998. It was acquired by Christine Svenningsen, a wealthy widow. The old house on Wheeler’s Island was torn down in 1999, but soon replaced with a recreation. Svenningsen began purchasing more of the Thimble Islands from 2003 to 2007, spending $33 million and eventually owning ten. In 2010 she married John G. Chiarella, Jr., a landscaping entrepreneur whose company managed the island properties. The couple divorced three years later and a $250 million legal battle followed. Wheeler’s Island is also known as Ghost Island because it is reputed to be haunted.
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