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

O’Rourke’s Diner (1946)

O’Rourke’s is a world famous diner in Middletown. Located at 728 Main Street, the diner was built by the Mountain View Diner Company (it was manufactured in 1946 and has the serial no. 223). In 1930 “Pete the Greek” Asvestras moved his lunch wagon here and by the 1940s James Dunn was running Dunn’s Diner on the spot. John O’Rourke purchased Dunn’s Diner in 1941 and soon acquired the Mountain View dining car as his business expanded. The diner, which did not have fire insurance, suffered severe fire damage in 2006 after a hamburger steamer was left on overnight. A fundraising campaign with support from the local community and around the world led to successful renovations and the diner reopened in 2008.

Storrs Hall House (1834)

At 104 East Avenue in Norwalk is a brick house built c. 1834 by Henry Selleck. By 1847 it was the residence of Storrs Hall A.M., who ran the English & Classical School in the house. He is described in Norwalk (1896), by Rev. Charles M. Selleck:

Dr. Hall graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and afterwards engaged in academic work in Connecticut. He was the brother of the learned Edwin Hall, D. D., the pastor for twenty-three years of the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, in which town Dr. Storrs Hall established a private of school of high grade, and remained for a number of years its able and successful head. He subsequently studied medicine at Yale University, New Haven, and leaving the east established himself as a physician in Rosendale, Wis. In 1860 he was elected a Trustee of Ripon College, Wisconsin, and four years later chosen Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the same institution. His life has been spent along scholastic lines, and he is now, at the age of four and eighty, industriously engaged in professional work.

Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Chapel (1995)

Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Chapel opened in 1995 at 28 Dog Lane in Storrs. Erected in an authentic Byzantine style, the Chapel’s interior has icons and frescoes painted by artists from Greece. The Chapel is part of the Center for Hellenic Studies Paideia at the University of Connecticut. The Center also includes the adjacent Makedonia building, built in 1997, where courses are offered on Greek and Byzantine language, history and culture. These are the first and only Greek Orthodox Church and Center for Hellenic Studies in an American State University.

Russell Smith House (1740)

The house at 502-504 Silver Lane in East Hartford was built in 1740 by Russell Smith. It was later converted into a two-family house and, among many other changes, the current two chimneys probably replaced an original large center chimney.

Amos Johnson House (1799)

Although surrounded by modern development, the old farmhouse at 750 Main Street South in Southbury has survived and is now home to the Carpino Funeral Home. The house was built in 1799 by Amos Johnson (1753-1824), but the kitchen ell on the south side is likely several decades older. Amos Johnson was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and later a town selectman.

Cordial Storrs House (1757)

At 1332 Storrs Road, on the campus of the University of Connecticut, is a colonial house that has served as student housing and is now UCONN’s Veterans House. The house was built c. 1757 and was the home of Cordial Storrs. This is most likely the Cordial Storrs (1692-1782) described in The Storrs Family (1886), by Charles Storrs:

Cordial Storrs of Mansfield, Conn., third son and ninth child of Samuel Storrs of Sutton-cum-Lound, Nottinghamshire, England, Barnstable, Mass., and Mansfield, Conn., was born in Barnstable, Mass., Oct. 14, 1692, and came with his father to Mansfield, Conn., in or about 1698. He married Hannah, daughter of Thomas Wood of Rowley, Mass. [They had four children]

Mrs. Hannah Wood Storrs died March 18, 1764. There is a tradition that she joined the Separatists and was disciplined by the church, but there is nothing in regard to this on the church records. The Separatist movement followed the great revivals which prevailed in Windham County in 1740-41. Itinerant preachers went about producing violent excitement among the people, decrying the old religious worship, and organizing new churches.

Cordial Storrs married, Oct. 10, 1765, Mrs. Catharine Bicknell, widow of (Capt.) Zachr. Bicknell of Ashford, Conn. He was sixty-seven [actually closer to 73] years of age at the time of this second marriage, and he seems to have contracted it with great care as to financial matters.

The farm and home of Cordial Storrs were in the North Parish. At the first church meeting of the Congregational church in that Parish, he was chosen deacon “by a very unanimous vote;” an office which he held until his death at the advanced age of ninety years, Oct. 1782.

His son Cordial [born 1728] died, unmarried, in 1755, at the age of twenty-seven, and with him the male line of this branch of the family became extinct. [Their son Jabez died in 1826]

Another Cordial Storrs lived from c. 1758 to 1790 and married Lettice Cummings.

Benjamin P. Downs House (1835)

Local tradition holds that the house at 657 South Britain Road in Southbury was built c. 1770, but it is more likely that it was built c. 1835 by Benjamin P. Downs on the site of his family’s old homestead. In 1854 he sold the house to Sally Curtiss, widow of George Curtiss, so it is also known as Mrs. S. Curtiss House. It was extensively restored by Henry Bassett, who acquired the house in 1946.