In 1822 Solomon Bidwell built a three-floor hotel at 1220 Main Street in Coventry. After Solomon died in 1858, his son Nathan Lyman ran the business, adding a wing to expand the hotel. When Nathan L. Bidwell died in 1877, it passed to his son Charles (died 1881) and then to Charles’ widow Lydia (died 1918). The hotel ceased operating in 1938. The Greek Revival building has a Colonial Revival two-story open porch across its front facade, added in the early twentieth century.
The large brick Italianate villa-style house at 37 Maple Avenue E in Higganum was built c. 1841-1843 by Orrin Freeman, a wealthy bachelor. As a prominent local businessman, Orrin Freeman (1807-1880) was part-owner of a brickyard started by his father. He also ran the largest lumberyard and sawmill company in Middlesex County with his brother. They supplied lumber for the shipbuilding operations at Higganum Landing until 1862. Freeman also served as Judge of Probate. The house remained in the Freeman family until 1904. Eugene Orlando Burr purchased the house in 1908. Between 1910 and 1942 he ran a dairy farm known as Higganum Dairy. The house has continued in the same family ever since. In 1976, to commemorate the Bicentennial, Burr’s son-in-law, Francis Wright “Bill Gardner, Jr., who acquired the property in 1957, painted a large “Spirit of ‘76” mural on the house‘s southwest elevation. The house is now a bed & breakfast called The Spirit of 76 House.
The East Berlin United Methodist Church was first organized as the East Berlin Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864. Services were held at various locations until a church building was completed in 1876. This small building was enlarged to to become the current church at 139 Main Street in 1896. That same year a parsonage was also constructed. The building once had an original Tiffany stained glass window. The church was restored after it was damaged by a fire in 1949.
Congregation Beth El in Norwalk was founded in 1934 as a Jewish Conservative Congregation. A religious school was established in 1938. The Congregation met at the Norwalk Jewish Center until constructing their own building at 109 East Avenue. Ground was broken for the new building on May 9, 1948 and the first two wings, for the school and an auditorium, were dedicated a year later. In 1954 the Sanctuary was completed.
In 1906, Louis Howe (1870-1968) leased the feldspar quarry and mill on Roaring Brook in South Glastonbury and made it the largest feldspar supplier in Connecticut, producing 65,000-70,000 tons of the mineral between 1906 and 1928, when the quarry became inactive. Howe was also a merchant and owned a water company that supplied South Glastonbury from his reservoir on Evergreen Lane near Chestnut Hill. Louis W. Howe also served in the state legislature. The Colonial Revival house at 1062 Main Street in Glastonbury was built for him in 1908.
The sign on the house at 55 Good Hill Road in Woodbury displays a date of 1685. That was the year Thomas Drakeley, Sr came to Woodbury. He gave one third of his property to his son, Thomas in 1725 and the house was probably built circa 1725-1730. The Drakeley family owned the house until 1918. The West Side School house once stood across from the Drakeley House. It is said that the school had no water so that the children had to use the Drakeleys’ well.
The J. Hebbard House in Windham Center is notable for its Late Georgian/Federal front door with fan light. Located at 11 Windham Green Road, the house was built c. 1783. It is also known as the Dr. Guild House. This is most likely Dr. Frank E. Guild, who is described in A Modern History of Windham County, Connecticut, Vol. II (1920):
Dr. Frank E. Guild was born in Thompson, August 14, 1853, son of Rev. John Burleigh Guild and Julia Ann Griggs. His father was a Baptist clergyman who preached at Clinton, Packerville and Thompson, in Connecticut. His son was graduated at State Normal School at New Britain in 1874, and from Long Island College Hospital in 1885, teaching school in the interim as a means to a professional education. Doctor Guild began medical practice in Windham, Conn., in October, 1886, and has continued there since, with oflices also at Willimantic. Has been president of Windham County Medical Society, vice president of the state society; member of town school board of Windham thirty years and chairman of the board for the past fifteen years. He was married April 28, 1887, to Harriet Clark, daughter of Edgar Clark of Putnam, who was a civil engineer and employed in surveying the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad. Doctor and Mrs. Guild are, respectively, S. A. R. and D. A. R. members, and Mrs. Gui1d’s grandmother was a real daughter. They have three children, Alan Clark, Harriet Griggs, and Julia Exton Guild.
Dr. Guild’s daughter, Dr. Harriet G Guild, became an authority on children’s kidney disease at Johns Hopkins and was the founder of the Kidney Foundation of Maryland.
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