Norwalk Town House (1835)

Old Norwalk Town House Museum

Located in Mill Hill Historic Park in Norwalk is the former Town House (or Town Hall), a Federal-style brick structure erected in 1835. Norwalk’s first Town House was erected by 1736 at the site of the old Trolley Barn at Wall and Knight Streets. A newer Town House was later built at Mill Hill, but it was destoyed when the British burned Norwalk on July 11, 1779 during the Revolutionary War. It took fifteen years before a new structure was erected in 1794. As described by John Warner Barber in his Connecticut Historical Collections (1836):

The old town house was pulled down in July, 1835. It had been long in a ruinous state, and much disfigured the appearance of the place. Some persons in the town who took upon themselves the responsibility of regulating things of this nature about the town, being impatient of the “law’s delay,” took advantage of the darkness of night, pulled down the obnoxious building, and piled up the rubbish by the side of the road.

The current building was built by by Captain Lewis Raymond, who used brick brought to Norwalk as ship’s ballast. The building was used as the seat of government until the Town of Norwalk and the City of South Norwalk were consolidated in 1913. Starting in 1924, the Norwalk Daughters of the American Revolution leased the building from the city, eventually adding a rear kitchen wing. The building was restored in 1965 for meeting and educational purposes. Still owned by the city, it is maintained, along with the rest of Mill Hill Historic Park, by the Norwalk Historical Society and the Norwalk-Village Green Chapter of the DAR.

Moose Home (1932)

Moose Hall

The Loyal Order of Moose is a fraternal and service organization. The Moose Lodge in Norwalk built Moose Hall at 68 South Main Street in 1932. The Moose Lodge had already occupied an earlier building on the same site. The building was purchased by Corinthian Lodge No. 16, F&AM, in the summer of 1995. The Corinthian Lodge sold the building to the City of Norwalk in 2014. Plans are for Moose Hall and its neighbor, the former Independent Order of Odd Fellows Building at 70 South Main Street, to be resold for mixed-use development. This past August, the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency requested proposals to make Environmental Site Assessment reports on the two buildings to evaluate their condition and estimate costs of rehabilitation.

Grace L. Raymond House (1925)

Grace L. Raymond House

Horace H. Raymond (1897-1954) married Grace Lillian Lattin in 1924. Soon thereafter (about 1825) she built a Bungalow style house at 198 Hundson Street in Berlin. Horace Raymond worked as an engineer for The Stanley Works and additions made to the rear of the house contained his own shop. In the early 1930s he took on a personal project: developing a pneumatic operator for an automatic door triggered by an optic device. He patented his invention in 1934. The first commercial installation of his “magic eye doors” was at Wilcox Pier Restaurant, at Savin Rock in West Haven. Another set of his automatic doors can still be found at the main entrance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the late 1930s he established his own company, Raymond Engineering, which was based in Middletown.

First Congregational Church of Washington (1801)

First Congregational Church of Washington, CT

The third meeting house of the First Congregational Church of Washington is located at 6 Kirby Road on Washington Green. It was built in 1801 and has a later (1910) Colonial Revival front porch. The original spire and belfry were replaced in 1845. The Ecclesiastical Society in Washington was formed in 1741. Washington was called Judea until the town was incorporated in 1779. The first meeting house was built in 1742 a little to the north of the present building. A second meeting house replaced it in 1754. It was destroyed by fire in 1800 and the current building was then erected.

Adams and Stone’s Blocks (1894)

Adams and Stone's Blocks, Main Street, Winsted

The two adjacent commercial buildings at 418-420 and 424-426 Main Street in Winsted were both built around 1894. The building on the right in the image above (No. 418, Winsted News Co.) was built by Horace O. Adams, who had his construction firm offices on an upper floor and ran a shoe store on the first floor. The building on the left (No. 424, Winsted Pawn & Jewlery) was built by Charles and Lester Stone, house painters, who had their offices in the building. Both buildings also contained residences as well as businesses.

Elijah Sherman House (1748)

Elijah Sherman House

The house at 14 Main Street South in Woodbury may have been built as early as 1748, but was possibly built c. 1796 by Elijah Sherman on land he had acquired in 1791.

Elijah Sherman (1754-1844) was born in Stratford, (or perhaps New Milford?). As related in a biography of his son, Rev. Charles Sherman, who became a Methodist minister [Vol. VII of Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit (1861), by William B. Sprague]:

Elijah Sherman, removed in early life from New Milford, his native place, to Woodbury, where he lived till January, 1844, when he died in his ninetieth year. He was a man of vigorous mind and excellent character, and was several times a member of the State Legislature. He commenced the Christian life at the age of forty, and was ever after an active and devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

He had earlier been a member of the Episcopal Church but, as described in The Town and People (1900), edited by Julia Minor Strong:

At what exact date is not positively known, but previous to 1812, Elijah Sherman, Sr., known as “Father Sherman,” became dissatisfied with the Episcopal Church, joined the Methodist denomination, and became very active and zealous in advancing its interests. In 1812 he was appointed the first regular “Class Leader,” the several ministers who had officiated here, having previously fulfilled that office. His home was the house now owned by the Methodist Society, and used as its parsonage. The exact date of its erection is lost, but the ancient grain bins and “smoke house” in the garret, attest to its great age, and it is probable that it was built previous to 1800. After his appointment as “Class Leader,” if not before, his “long kitchen” became the place for all the meetings of the Methodists, and was so used until the erection of the first Church, in 1824, on the site of the present edifice. Even after the church was built, the class and social meetings were still held at Mr. Sherman’s home, until the building of the present church, in 1840.

Elijah Sherman is further described in William Cothren’s History of Ancient Woodbury (1854):

The temperament of Mr. Sherman was humble, earnest, and eminently conscientious; firm in his adhesion to what he deemed to be the line of duty. He could not adopt Calvihistic opinions, then ardently pressed upon the public mind, in all the Congregational pulpits. Swayed by an enthusiastic spiritualism, his sympathies were with those humble heralds of the cross, so efficiently blessed in the morn of Methodism. For twenty years, with some few companions, himself an elder, the worshipers in this faith, assembled in his own house. His religious experiences gave him new developments in Christian duty. Chastened by the death of several children, his faith and zeal and knowledge grew deeper, more ardent and expanded. He became an eminent example of Christian excellence. Under that humble roof, from subdued and pure hearts, prayers gushed forth, not surpassed in pathos and piety by a Massillon or a Bourdaloue. Souls now looking to the great judgment seat with confidence and holy hope, recall with devout gratitude his ardent aspirations in that lowly temple. Had he received the advantages of early education and training, with the compass and melody of his voice, he would probably have made an eloquent and powerful preacher. He lived to see the erection of a Methodist church on his own homestead, and a numerous and devout company of believers worshiping there. He was gathered to his fathers at the advanced age of ninety, in the month of January, 1844.

The Methodist Church sold the house in 1937 and it has since been a private residence.