Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

John D. Perkins House (1750)

The saltbox house at 21 West Town Street in Norwich was built in the second half of the eighteenth century. The earliest known owner was John D. Perkins

An early section (possibly the east end) of the house at 165 Maple Street in East Hartford may date to as early as c. 1702. The house was enlarged, probably in the 1780s, when it would have also acquired its gambrel roof. According to local tradition the house was built by Isaac Porter, who also built a house at 74 Porter Street in East Hartford.

Bushnell Farm (1678)

One of the five oldest houses in Connecticut is the Bushnell Farm house at 1445 Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook. It began as a two room, one story, thatch roofed post and beam house built by the Elder Joshua Bushnell. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Elisha Bushnell House and J. Frederick Kelly, in his classic Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut (1924), calls it the Older Bushnell House. The house was expanded over the two centuries that the Bushnell family owned it. The property has a number of outbuildings, including an early eighteenth-century barn, a loom house (the Bushnells were both farmers and weavers) and a building referred to as the slave house. Maintained as a private residence in an excellent state of preservation, the property is often opened to schools, historical societies and the Connecticut River Museum Summer Camp.

Rev. Nathan Fenn House (1780)

The house at 883 Worthington Ridge in Berlin was built by Reverend Nathan Fenn (1749-1799), first minister of the Worthington parish, around the time of his ordination in 1780. As related by Catharine Melinda North in her History of Berlin (1916):

Jesse Eddy, who succeeded Mr. Fenn as owner of the property, had a large tin shop that stretched across the south yard, where many men were employed.

This shop was burned and rebuilt. Mr. Eddy was assisted in his business by his sons, George and Frederic.

One Sunday, a warm day in summer, George went with a companion to East Berlin and went in bathing at the factory pond. The water was unusually high, after a heavy rain, and George was drawn by an undercurrent over the dam and was drowned. Fifty men turned out to search for his body but it was not until after the water subsided that it was found caught in a tree.

Mr. James B. Carpenter purchased the Eddy shop and moved it down west of Deacon North’s store, where it forms the residence part of Mr. Damon’s place.
Nathaniel James married the daughter of Jesse Eddy, and, after that, the family used the house as a summer residence only, while their winters were spent in New York City.

Afterwards, the Rev. Seth Bliss owned the property for several years. It is now the residence of Charles S. Webster.

G. W. Miller Mill House (1850)

In the nineteenth century the area of Baileyville in Middlefield was an active industrial district. The building at 93 Baileyville Road was probably constructed around 1850 as an outbuilding for one of the mills along Ellen Doyle Brook. In 1876 it was converted into a residence by George W. Miller to house an employee of his phosphate mill. In 1921 it was purchased by the Lyman Gun Sight Corporation to house factory workers and their families.

Butler Paint Building (1894)

John F. Butler (1840-1905), who was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, founded the long-lived Butler Paint Company in Meriden in 1876. The store opened on June 25, 1876, the same day Custer made his last stand at the Little Big Horn. In 1892 Butler organized a joint stock company, taking a number of his employees into the new corporation. The store was originally located in the Horace C. Wilcox Block on Colony Street. As related in An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut and Men who Have Made It: A Century of Meriden “The Silver City.” (1906):

With a progressive spirit always characteristic of him, Mr. Butler in connection with the Meriden Furniture Co., in 1894, built the handsome block on Colony street which the John F. Butler Company now occupy.

Located at 51-53 Colony Street, the building housed the Meriden Furniture Company on one side and Butler Paint on the other. The Meriden Furniture Company went out of business in 1965, replaced for a time by the Music Box. Butler Paint went out of the family in 2001 and finally closed in 2011.

First Church of the Nazarene (1913)

The First Church of the Nazarene, located at 932 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, was recently in the news when its pastor, Rev. Dr. Augustus Sealy, was wounded after being shot three times outside the church on May 24. Police have recently arrested a suspect. The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination. Hartford’s congregation, officially organized in 1914, acquired the church building on Capitol Avenue in 1937. The building was originally constructed for the Olivet Baptist Church. First organized as a Sunday School on New Park Avenue in 1874, a wood-framed chapel was constructed on Park Street in 1888 and the church was officially organized in 1896.

The cornerstone of the new church on Capitol Avenue, designed by Johnson & Burns (a firm in business from 1908 to 1914), was laid on June 8, 1913 and the church was dedicated on February 15, 1914 (“CORNERSTONE LAID OF OLIVET CHURCH: NEW HOUSE OF WORSHIP FOR PARKVILLE Ministers of All Baptist Churches In the City Speak BUILDING TO BE WELL EQUIPPED AND COMMODIOUS,” Hartford Courant, June 9, 1913; “OLIVET CHURCH IS DEDICATED: New Building at Capitol Avenue Extension and Newton Street in Use OTHER CHURCHES TO LEND HELPING HAND All But $890.30 of $4,000 Debt Pledged–Church Mortgaged for $12,500,” Hartford Courant, February 16, 1914).

In 1936 the membership of the Olivet Baptist Church merged with the Memorial Baptist Church on Fairfield Avenue (“Olivet Merges With Memorial Baptist Church: Decision Made at Annual Meeting; Rev. M. L. Johnson Is Pastor,” Hartford Courant, April 4, 1936).