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

Rodeph Shalom Synagogue (1949)

The largest synagogue in Bridgeport was constructed by Congregation Rodeph Shalom in 1947-1949, with a school addition built in 1956. A group that broke away from the Reform Congregation B’nai Israel formed the Conservative Congregation Rodeph Shalom in 1909. The congregation met in Veruna Hall until 1923, when it purchased a church on Iranistan Avenue. The current synagogue, at 2385 Park Avenue in Bridgeport, was designed by architect Jesse James Hamblin of Milford, who also designed Saint John the Baptist Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in Bridgeport. It combines elements of the Neo-Classical and Art Deco styles.

Claudius Pease House (1795)

The house at 611 Main Street in Somers was built in 1795 and has later Greek Revival details. It was the home of Claudius Buchanan Pease, whose third wife was Mary W. Chapin Pease (1820-1889). Having spent much of her childhood in her mother’s hometown of Cornwall, Mary Chapin became one of the first students at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837. After graduating she returned to Cornwall to teach, but then in 1843 returned to Mount Holyoke as a teacher. She served as the school’s principal from 1850 to 1865, when she retired and married Claudius Pease. After her children grew up, Mary Chapin Pease ran the Elm Knoll Preparatory School for girls from her home in Somers. The house was converted into two apartments in 1925 and became a flower shop in 1985.

George W. Mitchell House (1873)

The front of the 1873 George W. Mitchell House at 35 Bellevue Avenue in Bristol was greatly altered after it became a funeral home in the twentieth century. The house was built for the owner of J.R. Mitchell & Sons clothing store. The son of Julius R. Mitchell, George W. Mitchell married Eva L. Dunbar. The Funk Funeral Home was started as furniture and undertaking business in 1865 by Christian Funk, a German immigrant. In 1940 Emil Funk moved the business to the Mitchell House. The rectangular block in the front of the house was built in 1960 as a 100-seat chapel. (more…)

Butler-Simpson House (1838)

Middle Haddam in East Hampton was a shipbuilding center in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and Samuel B. Butler made pulleys and other hardware for the shipbuilding industry. He built a Greek Revival house at 30 Knowles Road in 1838. It was purchased by Captain Edward M. Simpson in 1855. He was a steamboat pilot on the Connecticut River and was captain of the famous steamboat City of Hartford. His daughter later had a house nearby.

Central Fire Station, Middletown (1899)

The Central Fire Station, later called the Main Street Fire House, at 533 Main Street in Middletown, was built in 1899 during the era of horse drawn fire coaches. There is a hosedrying tower on the building’s northwest corner. It has been continuously used by the Middletown Fire Department ever since and its Renaissance Revival design has made it a notable landmark of the north section of Main Street. (more…)

Medad Stone Tavern (1803)

Medad Stone was born in Guilford in 1754 and later inherited his father’s tavern on the northwest corner of the Green. Stone was also part-owner of a stage company that carried public mail. Road conditions at the time were bad and in 1803 Stone and his partners petitioned the General Assembly to reroute the Boston Post Road. Confident that the alterations would be made, Stone built a large new tavern of Dutch Colonial design along the proposed route. Located in the West Side of Guilford (modern address 197 Three Mile Course), the tavern had fourteen rooms and ten fireplaces. Although Medad Stone battled for ten years to get his turnpike proposal accepted, the change was never made and the new tavern never opened. Stone, who died in 1815, began farming activities there, which were continued by Joel Davis, who bought the property from Stone’s daughter in 1843. His great-grandson Leonard Davis Hubbard (1909-2001) bequeathed the Tavern to the Guilford Keeping Society in 2001. It was restored to its 1803 appearance and was opened as a museum by the GKS, which also owns the Thomas Griswold House.

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Community Baptist Church (1937)

The Community Baptist Church in Norwalk began as the South Norwalk Baptist Church in 1859. As described in Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years (1901):

The church was organized on May 5th, 1859, at the residence of John L. Burbank, on South Main street. Mr. and Mrs. Burbank were deeply interested in their church, and their home was bequeathed by them for a Baptist parsonage, nearly forty years after the church was organized within its walls. [. . .] The Rev. L. D. Gowen was chosen pastor at this meeting and the first services were held in Smith’s Hall, which is now Tilly’s carriage factory, on May 22, 1859. [. . .] A temporary place of worship called the Baptist Tabernacle was completed shortly before Mr. Fagan’s advent as pastor of the church [in 1861]. That building is now occupied by William Podmore, on North Main street, on the site of the present church edifice [built in 1885], on West avenue. [. . .]

The 1885 church building burned on February 2, 1936. Instead of rebuilding on the same West Avenue site, which had become a business area, parishioners decided to rebuild at 105 East Avenue and the church’s name was changed from the South Norwalk Baptist Church to the Community Baptist Church. The cornerstone was laid April 11, 1937 and the first service was offered October 17, 1937.