Resembling a Venetian Palazzo, the building at 124 Temple Street in New Haven was built in 1909 as the offices of the United Illuminating Company. The company formed in 1899 when the New Haven Electric Company acquired the Bridgeport Electric Light Company. The company is now based in Orange. A third floor and rear wing were added to the building in 1916. Both the building and the addition were designed by R. W. Foote of Foote & Townsend.
Private homes hosted Masses in Roxbury until a mission church dedicated to St. Patrick was built in 1885 at 25 Church Street. In the 1880s, Irish Catholics had been settling in Roxbury to work in the local quarries. In 1908 the mission was placed in the care of a new parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Washington Depot. In the early 1950s, St. Patrick Church’s bell tower had to be taken down due to storm damage and the entry was altered.
The former Hall of Records building, at 66 Center Street in Manchester, was built of amber brick in the Colonial Revival style in 1896. Land for the building was donated by Frank Cheney (1817-1904). The building was designed by the Hartford architectural firm of Hapgood and Hapgood and built by Charles R. Treat. The Hall of Records contained the Probate Court and the Town Clerk’s office until a new Town Hall was built in 1926. 66 Center Street was then the home of home of the Manchester Police Department until 1954 and was used for various town offices thereafter. It was refurbished and rededicated as the Probate Court building in 1982.
Not much is known about the origins of the house at 71 Broad Street in Guilford. It dates to c. 1850 and the original owner was John Evarts. It may have been built as a barn and converted to a house later on. Among various other changes over the years, the front entrance was moved from the side to the front and a porch was added to the west side (later removed).
Captain Nathaniel Root, Sr. (1757-1840), a farmer, was one of the original seven proprietors who in 1813 agreed to erect a glass factory in Coventry, along the Boston Post Road. The Coventry glassworks would be in operation until 1849. Root built the Federal-style house at 1046 Boston Turnpike in 1809.
At 170 Old Post Road in Old Saybrook is a gambrel-roofed house built c. 1790 (before 1803) by Phineas Bushnell (1718-1803), shortly after he married his second wife, Hepsibah Lewis of Killingworth, in 1789. The house passed to his son Samuel Bushnell (1748-1828), who had married Hepzibah Pratt in 1775. Their daughter, Hepzibah (1776-1818), married Samuel Dickinson (1774-1861) in 1796. The house was later owned by their son, John Seabury Dickinson (1807-1879) and then by his son, John S. Dickinson (1846-1922), who served as a Town Selectman, was president of the Saybrook Musical and Dramatic Club and was a founder and first president of a literary society known as the Crackers and Cheese Club. The house remained in the Dickinson family until 1934. Renovated in 1958, the house was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built in the mid-nineteenth century, the Italianate house at 20 Park Place North in Winsted has interesting columns on its front entrance and side porch. I think they resemble Egyptian Revival columns. The nomination for the Winsted Green Historic District describes them as resembling elongated vase-shaped legs of furniture. The house is now owned by Northwest Community College. Used for offices it is known as the Regina M. Duffy Administration Building, named for Dr. Regina M. Duffy (died 2007) who was president of the College for seventeen years and was the first woman in the state to head a Community College.
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