This video is about a section of Asylum Street (south side, east of Trumbull Street) and the buildings and businesses that were once there, including the Stackpole Moore Tryon Company, Flint-Bruce Company, Horsfalls, H. F. Corning & Co. leather goods, Cone’s Hardware, Leopold Morse and a careful dentist!
In 2013, Ralph Nader purchased the former Winsted Savings Bank building at 654 Main Street in Winsted to become the future home of the American Museum of Tort Law, which he first announced was in development in 1998. The museum, which opened in 2015, has a mission to inform and inspire Americans about trial by jury and the benefits of tort law (the law of wrongful injuries). The museum‘s building was erected in 1925 by the Winsted Savings Bank, which was incorporated in 1860. From 1867 until 1925 the bank had occupied the 1851 building at 690 Main Street that had originally been erected by the Winsted Bank.
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The former train station at 5 Depot Place in Bethel was built in 1899. It replaced an earlier station, erected at the same location in 1852, when it was on the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad. The original station had burned down in December of 1898. The second station continued in use until 1996, when a new station opened on Durant Avenue. For some years the former station became a bicycle shop and it is now home to Broken Symmetry Gastro Brewery. In 2019 the station’s old canopy, which extends along the tracks on the west side of the building, was restored.
Henry Gildersleeve, Sr. (1817-1894) was a member of the prominent Gildersleeve shipbuilding family of Portland. In 1853 he erected his house, which has an Italianate-style cupola, at 625 Main Street. In 1932 the house was sold to Harold Randall, who is most likely the one who laid out the adjoining small street called Randall Place. As related in the History of Middlesex County, Connecticut, with Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men (1884):
The eldest son of Sylvester and Rebecca Gildersleeve inherits from his father those rare traits of character that have distinguished the Gildersleeves, not only as a family of successful shipbuilders and merchants, but as a family who are noted for their public spirit and large hearted benevolence.
Henry was born in Portland, in that part of the town now known as Gildersleeve, on the 7th of April 1817. He enjoyed the limited educational advantages afforded by the district school, but acquired sufficient knowledge of the rudimental branches to fit him for the occupation he had chosen. At the age of 17, he commenced in his father’s yard to learn the business of shipbuilding, and soon acquired a thorough knowledge of the details of the business. At the age of 25, he was taken into partnership with his father, under the firm name of S. Gildersleeve & Son. In December 1872, he associated himself with the house of Bentley, Gildersleeve & Co., shipping and commission merchants, on South Street, New York. He retained his connection with the Portland shipbuilding firm and at the end of ten years he retired from the New York firm, resigning in favor of his son, Sylvester, who still continues the business in connection with his brother, Oliver, under the firm name of S. Gildersleeve & Co. Henry Gildersleeve, since retiring from his New York business, has devoted his whole time and attention to the shipbuilding and other interests with which he is connected in his native town.
Mr. Gildersleeve has been identified with many public enterprises outside of his shipbuilding interests. He was for a number of years a director in the Hartford Steamboat Company, and is now president of the Portland and Middletown Ferry Company, and a director in the Middlesex Quarry Company, also the First National Bank of Portland; and trustee of the Freestone Savings Bank. He has been for many years an active member and a liberal supporter of the Trinity Episcopal Church at Portland, was a large contributor to the fund for the erection of the building, and a member of the building committee.
In 1860, he represented the democratic party in the State Legislature, and sustained every measure for the vigorous prosecution of the war.
Thomas Jefferson Sawyer was a sea captain who was born on Mason’s Island in Stonington in 1807 and moved to the coastal village of Noank in Groton circa 1840, where he built the Greek Revival-style house that still stands at 72 Main Street. He was an organizer and leading member of the Fort Hill Baptist Church in Groton. Among his children was a son who, like his father, was also named after the third president.
Historic Buildings of Connecticut began back on April 30, 2007 with a post about the Joseph Webb House in Wethersfield. After 16 years there are now 4,406 building posts here. I want to thank everyone who has visited this website and my YouTube channel (remember to subscribe to the channel!).
The New Preston Congregational Church, located at 15 Church Street in the New Preston section of the town of Washington, was built in about 1853. The New Preston Ecclesiastical Society was originally established in 1753 and its first meeting house was located southwest of the common at New Preston Hill (at the intersection of New Preston Hill, Findley, & Gunn Hill Roads). The Society decided to build a second meeting house in 1766 at the northwest corner of the common and this was replaced in 1824 by a stone church building that still exists today and is known as the Hill Church. By the mid-nineteenth century, New Preston Center, a mile to the east, had developed into an industrial center and the congregation decided (after much debate) to erect a new church there in 1853. This is the current New Preston Congregational Church, while the Hill Church is used for summer services. In 1886 the church ordered a Steere & Turner Opus #221 organ which was restored in 1969.
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