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

Dr. Howard Alden House (1794)

The house at 480 North Main Street in Suffield was built in 1794 for Dr. Howard Alden. The house was called “Aldenheim.” As related in The Centennial Celebration of the Hartford County Medical Association, September 26th, 1892 (1893):

first upon the list of founders of the Hartford County Medical Society[,] as read by the clerk this morning, stands the name of Howard Alden. He came to Suffield from Ashfield, Mass., at the age of 27, and was of the sixth generation from that John Alden whom Longfellow has made famous in his “Courtship of Miles Standish“: “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Now we are told that shortly after Howard Alden came to town, he was taken sick with typhoid fever, and chanced to have as his nurse a fair damsel — one Rhoda Williston — whom he fell deeply in love with, and married on his recovery. So the romance of the marriage of John and Priscilla is reproduced in that of Howard and Rhoda.

For full half a century he and his genial associate, Dr. Pease, practiced side by side; the one, as was said, being good to the poor, and the other to the — rich! so both were we cared for: happy town! As may be inferred, he was a devout Christian and long a deacon of the Congregational Church. A case of what he called “Canine Madness” (Hydrophobia) may be found fully and graphically reported by him, in the reprint of the Connecticut Medical Society’s Proceedings, page 338; it occurred on the 28th of October, 1797. He died in 1841, leaving twelve children, only one of whom survives, at present a resident of Ohio. A few relatives are still in town, including a granddaughter — a most estimable lady — who, with her husband, still occupies the old homestead.

His son, also a doctor, settled in Ohio, as described in the History of Medina County and Ohio (1881):

Dr. Howard Alden came to Medina County in 1834, from Suffield, Conn., and located at Seville, in company with Dr. Mills. From Seville, he moved to Orange, Ashland County, in company with Dr. William Doming. He came back to Westfield in 1840. His father was a physician, with whom he obtained his medical education.

Oak Hill School (1911)

In 1893, Emily Wells Foster, a Sunday school teacher at the Morgan Street Mission School/Morgan Street Chapel in Hartford, started the nation’s first nursery for blind children in a house on Kenyon Street in Hartford. Her efforts began with her interest in a blind baby on Hartford’s East Side who spent his waking hours in a small pen in a dingy room. In 1893 she also became Assistant Secretary of the State Board of Education for the Blind, later serving as Secretary and Treasurer from 1901 to 1905. (“Will Honor Benefactor Of Blind People: Memorial to Be Placed on Grave of Mrs. Foster, Who Started Education Program Here,” Hartford Courant, November 12, 1936) The nursery school soon moved to a larger residence on Asylum Avenue. A grammar school was also added, which moved to a new building at 120 Holcomb Street in Hartford in 1911. A Colonial Revival building, it was designed by Andrews, Jacques & Rantoul, the same firm that designed the Governor’s Mansion and the Hartford Club. The Nursery and Kindergarten for the Blind had moved to Garden Street in Farmington, but later moved to join the grammar school in the building on Holcomb Street after a fire. The school would become known as the Connecticut Institution and Industrial Home for the Blind, then the Connecticut Institute for the Blind. In 1952 it was renamed the Oak Hill School. Today Oak Hill serves children and adults with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities.

Zalmon Bradley House (1750)

In 1750, Zalmon Bradley constructed a saltbox house at 105 Meeting House Lane in the Greenfield Hill neighborhood of Fairfield. Before 1800 the house was expanded by Bradley’s sister Sarah and her husband Dudley Baldwin (perhaps then or later it was remodeled with a hip roof). The house was owned for over a century by the Baldwin family and Dudley’s brother, Abraham Baldwin, lived there for a time. Abraham Baldwin was a delegate to the constitutional convention in 1787 and founder of the University of Georgia. Other notables frequented the house, including Joel Barlow, a politician, diplomat and poet who was one of the Hartford Wits, and Talleyrand, Napoleon’s chief diplomat. The house has recently been restored and remodeled.

Dudley Fox House (1854)

Dudley Fox (1823-1889), a silversmith, built the house at 177 Naubuc Avenue in East Hartford in 1854. He then constructed a factory to the north were he manufactured silver plated ware. Fox served as the Hockanum postmaster from May 12, 1865, through November 27, 1867 and used a fancy stamp cancellation marking in the form of a Running Fox. (for more information see “Dudley’s Fox” by W.J. Duffney). Business did not go well and in 1869 Fox sold the house to his son-in-law. (more…)

St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, East Plymouth (1792)

The third oldest surviving Episcopal Church building in Connecticut is the former St. Matthew’s Church in East Plymouth. The church was built by a group of members of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Plymouth who lived in the eastern part of town and were displeased in 1790 when the church decided to build a new meetinghouse in Plymouth Hollow, now Thomaston, which was then in the far western part of Plymouth. St. Matthew’s Church was built in 1792 with support from Episcopalians from the neighboring towns of Bristol, Harwinton and Burlington. The largest part of the original membership of St. Matthew’s came from the northwestern section of Bristol. Many Episcopalians had settled there near Chippens Hill and wanted a church nearby. St. Matthew’s Church is a vernacular building, in many ways similar to contemporary Congregational meetinghouses. A rural community grew up around the church, which is adjacent to the East Plymouth Cemetery. The history of the building can be found in the History of the Town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895), compiled by Francis Atwater:

The church was built in 1792, but was unfinished inside, for at a meeting held March 5, 1793, Isaac W. Shelton and Stephen Graves were appointed a committee to “lay out the money, and procure somebody to do off the inside of the church.” And again, at a meeting held at the church December 31, 1793, the following committee was appointed to “examine and find the most convenient way of doing off the church and make report at the next meeting:” Noah Andrews, Ira Dodge, Isaac W. Shelton, Calvin Woodin, and Timothy Sperry; at which meeting held January 13, 1794, it was voted to “finish the church in the following manner: to make a broad alley through the center of the lower floor, and finish the sides with pews in the most convenient manner, also to finish the gallery by making two rows of seats round the whole square, and a row of pews across the south end.” It was voted that the church be called St. Matthew’s at a meeting held October 19, 1795. On November 10, 1794, it was voted to adopt the constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Connecticut, and Caleb Matthews, the parish clerk, was instructed to attend the convention at Cheshire and request the Right Rev. Dr. Seabury to consecrate the new church.

In 1795, “the church was consecrated by Bishop Samuel Jarvis, second Bishop of Connecticut.” Various changes were made to the building over the years, as again quoted from Atwater (in 1895):

When first erected the building stood in front of its present location with its entrance at the south end, but in 1842, or soon after, was turned around and placed where it now is. The old square pews were removed about 1830.

[. . .] In 1871 or ’72, the church was remodeled, a chancel arranged, the old towering pulpit taken down, and doors taken off the small pews, also a ceiling made to reach across from one gallery to another. There is no chimney, and when a stove was put in the people thought that no one could speak in such close atmosphere. It used to be a large and full congregation, but has dwindled down to half a dozen old decrepit ladies, and service is seldom performed there.

The former church is now a private residence.

Levi E. Coe Library (1893)

Born in Middlefield in 1828, Levi E. Coe later settled in Meriden, where he became president of the Meriden Savings Bank and also served as a judge. He built and donated the library in his hometown that bears his name. The Richardsonian Romanesque-style library was dedicated in 1893. The building, located at 414 Main Street, was expanded in 1974 to connect to the neighboring Library Hall, the former St. Paul’s Episcopal Church that the library had acquired in 1920.

Old Axminster Building, Bigelow-Hartford Carpet Company (1902)

Thompsonville in Enfield was once home to a substantial carpet manufacturing industry. In 1901, the Hartford Carpet Company of Enfield merged with the E.S Higgens & Company of New York to form the Hartford Carpet Corporation. Expansion followed and in c. 1902-1905 the company built a large mill building for the production of Axminster, a type of tufted-pile carpet. Located at the southern end of the factory complex, the Axminster Building is a four-story structure with a strong structural system to contain the many massive broadlooms required for production of Axminster. The building’s east end was once a common wall shared with the Color House, which has since been demolished. A new Axminster building was constructed in 1923. By that time the Hartford Carpet Corporation had merged with the Bigelow Carpet Company of Clinton, Massachusetts to form the Bigelow-Hartford Carpet Company (1914). Today the former carpet mill complex has been converted into the Bigelow Commons apartments. (more…)