Lester Nichols House (1893)

Lester Nichols House, Branford

Before the Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford was erected in 1893, a house on the site that belonged to Lester J. Nichols was torn down to make way for the new building. Nichols, who was a director of the Malleable Iron Fittings Company, then built his new Georgian Revival house, designed by William H. Allen, at 730 Main Street. Lester Nichols was born in Middlebury in 1849. He is described in the second volume of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918):

Reared in New Haven, Lester J. Nichols was educated in the city schools until the age of seventeen years, when he went to Branford and secured employment with the Malleable Iron Fittings Company as shipping clerk. Later he became accountant and subsequently he represented the company on the road as traveling salesman, and in 1902 was chosen secretary, in which office he has since served. On joining the company in 1866 there were only sixty employes [sic], but at the present time there are over thirteen hundred. The business has steadily grown until it has now assumed extensive proportions and it ranks among the leading industrial concerns of New Haven county. Mr. Nichols is one of the five directors of the company and all of the men at its head are good reliable business men who command the confidence of those with whom they have dealings.

On the 8th of December, 1870, Mr. Nichols was married in Branford to Miss Alice E. Cook, a native of Branford [. . . .] Since starting out upon his business career he has been identified with but one concern and has labored untiringly for its interests with most excellent results. As the years have passed prosperity has come to him and he is now one of the substantial as well as one of the most highly esteemed citizens of Branford.

A less respectful lens on Nichols’ private life can be found in a piece entitled “Nichols ‘Niece’ Talk of Branford,” that appeared in the Bridgeport Herald of December 1, 1907.

First Church of West Hartford (1946)

First Church West Hartford

An Ecclesiastical Society to serve the West Division of Hartford (now the Town of West Hartford) was first established c. 1712. A series of meetinghouses have stood in the vicinity of the intersection of Main Street and Farmington Avenue in West Hartford Center. The original meetinghouse, erected c. 1712, was replaced by a new one, erected between 1742 and 1744. The Society’s next three meetinghouses reflected changes in architectural taste during the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. In 1834 the Society voted to erect a new building that was designed in the fashionable Greek Revival style. In 1882, the congregation moved into their fourth building, called the Greystone Church, a granite edifice designed by George E. Potter in the popular Gothic Revival style. By the early twentieth century, the Colonial Revival was dominant and plans for a new building in that style were already underway when the Greystone Church was destroyed in a fire on January 3, 1942. The basement floors were completed by November 1943 and services were held there until the sanctuary of the new First Church of West Hartford was built in 1946, after delays caused by material shortages during World War II. The chapel was built in 1956.

Southport Eastbound Railroad Station (1884)

Southport Eastbound Station

The community of Southport in the town of Fairfield has two historic railroad stations (one eastbound and one westbound) on the New Haven Line of the Metro-North Railroad (originally a line of the the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad). The older of the two is the eastbound station, built in 1884 to replace an earlier railroad depot destroyed in a fire. It is typical of the brick stations that were built in Connecticut in the 1880s, but with more than usual attention to its decorative roof that reflects the High Victorian Gothic and Eastlake styles. No longer used as a station, the building is now home to Paci Restaurant. (more…)