The brick Greek Revival house at 354 Main Street in Cromwell was built c. 1840 by Charles H. Hubbard, a mason born in Litchfield. Hubbard married Nancy Haskell of Middletown in 1839 and lived on River Road in Cromwell before moving to his new house. Hubbard died in 1847 and his family sold the house to Eunice Sage, widow of Dewitt C. Sage, in 1865.
Henry Skinner was a wheelwright who owned a sawmill and gristmill on Pocotopaug Stream in East Hampton. In the 1850s, he built a Greek Revival house at 66 Skinner Street, across the street from his mills. He sold the house in 1867, the same year he completed a new and larger house, built in the Italianate style at 70 Skinner Street. His new house remained in his family until 1919, when it was divided into apartments.
According to the sign on the house at 1346 Enfield Street in Enfield, it was “Built by Dr. Simeon Field, 1763.” Born in Longmeadow, Mass. in 1731, Dr. Field built the house in the same year he married Margaret Reynolds. According to Vol. I of the Field Genealogy (1901), by Frederick Clifton Pierce (a work dedicated to the famous Marshall Field of Chicago), Dr. Simeon Field
graduated at Yale College as a physician. He settled in Enfield, Conn., where he was very celebrated, and had an extensive practice. He also kept a tavern which is now, 1900, still standing, and is known as the old Field tavern. He also was an active and influential man during the Revolution, and during his time was easily the most important man in his town.
His son also became a doctor, as described in the fourth volume of Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, July 1778-June 1792 (1907), by Franklin Bowditch Dexter:
Simeon Field, the eldest child of Dr. Simeon Field, of Enfield, Connecticut, and nephew of Dr. Samuel Field (Yale 1745), was born in Enfield on June 3, 1765. His mother was Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Peter Raynolds (Harvard 1720), of Enfield, and sister of Dr. Samuel Raynolds (Yale 1750). He joined College in May of the Freshman year.
He studied medicine with his father, and settled at first in Somers, the town next east of Enfield; but about 1790, on the decline of his father’s health, he returned to Enfield, where he became locally distinguished for his valuable professional services. Though not a member of the church, he was always a stable friend and supporter of the institutions of religion.
After a feebleness of several months he died in Enfield on March 1, 1822, in his 57th year. He left no descendants, and his property, inventoried at $6833, was divided between his brothers and sisters. The honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred on him by Yale College in 1817.
The Gallaher Mansion in Norwalk was built in 1929-1931 for the inventor and industrialist Edward Beach Gallaher (1873-1953). A graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., Gallaher became a pioneer in early automobile design. In 1910 he settled in Norwalk and established the Clover Manufacturing Company, a producer of industrial abrasives. In 1917 he purchased land for an estate from Dr. Edwin Everett Smith. The site where the mansion would eventually be built, in the Cranbury section of Norwalk, had been the location, from c. 1886 to 1912, of Dr. Smith’s Kensett Sanitarium, which served people suffering from mental disorders and addictions. After a fire destroyed the sanitarium and Dr. Smith’s private cottage in 1912, the institution was moved to 65 East Avenue, on the Norwalk Green, where it operated until Smith’s retirement in 1914. The fieldstone Gallaher Mansion was designed by Percy L. Fowler in the Tudor Revival style. After Gallaher’s death, his wife Inez followed his wishes in bequeathing the mansion to the Stevens Institute. The Institute’s plans to house research projects in buildings to be erected on the estate’s grounds did not materialize. After Inez Gallaher died in 1965, the City of Norwalk acquired the 227-acre property from the Stevens Institute for use as a public park called Cranbury Park. Recent efforts by the city and the Friends of Cranbury Park, a non-profit citizen’s alliance formed in 2006, have restored the mansion and grounds. The mansion can now be rented for weddings and other events.
Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport was built in 1862. Eight years later the parish began to consider plans to build an adjacent chapel that would serve as a Sunday school. The Parish School opened on September 23, 1872 in the new Carpenter Gothic-style Chapel, which features board-and-batten siding. Originally a free-standing structure, the Chapel, which now serves as a parish hall, has been connected to the church complex through twentieth-century additions.
The building listed in the nomination to the National Register of Historic Places for the Colony Street/West Main Street Historic District as the Cahill Beef Block (55 Colony Street [historically 57 Colony Street] in Meriden) is a Georgian/Neoclassical Revival structure built in 1902-1903. It was also a branch of the Swift Beef Co., as described in Meat-packer Legislation: Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Sixty-Sixth Congress, Second Session, on Meat-packer Legislation, Tuesday, March 18, 1920:
C. W. Cahill, Meriden, Conn.: Local slaughterer became Swift agent, organized Cahill Beef Co. 1909. Sold out his interest to Swift 1915 because he had to handle Swift goods exclusively. Corporation dissolved 1916. Now Swift branch house.
A more detailed account of Cornelius W. Cahill’s career can be found in An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut and the Men Who Have Made It, AKA A Century of Meriden (1906):
He was born in Ireland, Februarv 12. 1844, and his parents located in Middletown when he was three years old. . . .
In 1865 he came to Meriden and became a clerk in the provision store of Samuel C. Paddock where by courteous attention to patrons he made himself not only valuable to his employer but popular with a large number of customers. When he was offered a more lucrative position in the same line of business he made up his mind that he could be as much value in his own store as in that of others and encouraged by his customers, of whom he had made personal friends, established the City Market. After carrying on the business for some time alone he took in a partner, John W. Coe, and continued the business for three years. John W. Coe sold his interest to Patrick Cahill and M. O’Brien. It then became known as Cahill & O’Brien Later with Bartholomew & Coe he went into the pork packing business, but within a year returned to the retail business at the City Market. Some time afterward he retired from the retail business, selling his interest in the City Market to B. B. Lane, and became again the partner of Bartholomew & Coe, who in the meantime had become the Meriden agents for Swift’s beef. At the end of a year Messrs. Coe and Bartholomew retired, selling their interest to Mr. Cahill,; who for the past twenty-five years has continued the wholesale commission business in handling the Swift beef, which at the close of the first century of Meriden’s history has increased to almost mammoth proportions.
In 1903 Swift & Co. erected their present handsome brick building on North Colony street which is equipped with every modern facility for receiving, keeping and handling the large amount of beef shipped daily from Chicago and supplied by Mr. Cahill to the meat markets in the vicinity of Meriden.
The former Swift/Cahill building is now known as The Studios at 55 and features band rehearsal rooms, a recording studio, and a performance hall.
The Johnson Block is a retail and apartment building built in 1910 at 705-713 Main Street in Manchester. Recently the Johnson Block was purchased by new owners with plans to make much-needed repairs to the building.
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