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

South Britain Congregational Church (1825)

Having made the trek to the Congregational church in Southbury each Sunday for three decades, residents of the South Britain section of town petitioned the General Assembly to have four months of winter preaching near their own homes. The South Britain Ecclesiastical Society was formed in 1766 and built a meeting house on the Green in 1770. The current South Britain Congregational Church, located at 693 South Britain Road north of the first building, was built in 1825. The interior was renovated in 1869, when the pediments over the three front doors were also changed from semi-circular fanlights to one curvilinear and two triangular pediments (more in keeping with the Greek Revival style).

Dr. J. W. Felty House (1910)

Tomorrow is the 34th Annual Mark Twain Holiday House Tour, which features several houses in Hartford/West Hartford and the Hartford Club. One of the houses on the tour is located at 734 Prospect Avenue. A Queen Anne house, it was built in 1910 for Dr. J.W. Felty, a prominent surgeon. The Kansas City Journal of June 30, 1897 noted:

Dr. Felty Leaves Kansas.

Abilene, Kas., June 29. (Special ) Dr. J.W. Felty. vice president of the State Medical Society and of the Association of Santa Fe Surgeons, left today for Hartford, Conn., where he will locate. He has practiced in Abilene for thirteen years and is one of the best known physicians in the state

Dr. Felty‘s Hartford house was designed by Isaac Allen, Jr. and the original blueprints are now at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Mention of Dr. Felty’s work can be found in an article written by his colleague, Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, a urologist who was the father of Katharine Hepburn, “Clinical Tests of Kidney Function” in the Yale Medical Journal of March 1912 (Vol. 18, No. 7):

Unilateral Kidney Disease. Under the heading of unilateral kidney diseases come the tubercular kidneys, the renal calculi, hydronephrosis, pyonephrosis, and pyelitis. In tests of this class of cases, ureteral catheterization, in order to compare the work of the two kidneys, is essential. It is necessary not only to make a diagnosis of the condition of the diseased kidney, but, more important still—and here is where any test that lends itself to quantitative estimation reigns supreme—it is necessary to know whether the other kidney is capable of functioning for both. A case of multiple calculi, sent me by Dr. Felty of Hartford, illustrates the point here made. From the appearance of the X-ray plate, made by Dr. Heublein, Dr. Felty was sure the kidney should be removed if possible. He wished to know how well the other kidney was functioning. With double ureteral catheterization, I found that the man excreted no phthalein from the diseased kidney, and the other kidney showed an output of 40 per cent. in one hour. Dr. Felty removed the diseased kidney, and the man made an uneventful recovery.

Dr. Felty had a second home in Florida. A notice in the Winter Park Post of September 2, 1920 states:

Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Felty with their son, Dr. A. R. Felty, of Hartford, Conn., spent three weeks here during August renovating their new home on Interlachen Avenue, purchased from Mrs, Rogers. The interior has been newly papered and other improvements added to the House and grounds. Plans are in the hands of an architect for a veranda and pergolas, which will be built when Dr. and Mrs. Felty come down in February. Dr. Felty is a distinguished surgeon of his home city and his son, who is a graduate of Yale and Johns Hopkins, is one of the house physicians in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Felty’s daughter married a brother of Mr. Woolley, son-in-law to Mr. E. W. Brewer of this place. Dr. and Mrs. Felty greatly enjoyed their visit here and declared themselves delighted with their new property, which is in the choicest residential district of town.

As mentioned in the excerpt above, Dr. J. W. Felty’s son, Dr. A. R. Felty, was a doctor at Johns Hopkins. Felty’s syndrome, a medical condition, is named for him.

Captain David Sage House (1720)

Built circa 1720, the Captain David Sage House, at 1276 Worthington Ridge in Berlin, remained in the same family until the 1970s. The Sage family donated the land for Sage Park in Berlin. In her History of Berlin (1916), Catharine Melinda North gives the text of a letter, dated January 29, 1906, from Mr. George Sage:

My dear Miss North: It is a pleasure to reply to your request for a history of our farm house. The Sage house was built about the year 1720 by Captain David Sage, (son of John and grandson of David who settled in Middletown in 1652,) who, with his twin brother Benjamin, came to Berlin from Middletown. It might be well to add here that Benjamin’s house built at the same time, stood below David’s and just south of the Clark place. Benjamin Sage married Mary Allen of Berlin, and died in 1734; his house has long since disappeared.

Captain David married Bathsheba Judd of Berlin and they had four sons and four daughters. One son, Deacon Jedediah, married Sarah Marcy of Berlin and remained on the present Sage farm. Another son, Zadoch, lived almost directly across the road from Benjamin, and the old well is now near the site of the house, a few rods north of where the brick schoolhouse stood. As time went by the Sage house was filled with the deacon’s four sons and three daughters, so Captain David moved into the house built by his brother Benjamin and was ninety-three years old when the road was built west toward Mr. Welden’s. I believe Jedediah was deacon of the Second Congregational church for twenty-seven years. He died in 1826 aged eighty-nine years.

Colonel Erastus, his son, married Elinor Dickenson of Berlin and succeeded to the farm where ten children were born to them, my father, Henry, being the one who stayed at home. I have my grandfather’s papers among which is his appointment by the General Assembly to be Colonel of the 4th Regiment of cavalry in the militia and signed by Oliver Wolcott Esq., as governor, and dated the 31st day of May 1819.

The property has been in the family about 186 years, and for five generations. The house has been added to from time to time, but the original has been well preserved with its huge stone chimney, four fireplaces, brick ovens, and the hewn white oak timbers forming the framework are as solid today as when they were raised almost two hundred years ago. Yours sincerely, Geo. H. Sage.

Miles Blackstone House (1831)

The Greek Revival house at 18 Pine Orchard Road in Branford was built in 1831. It is known as the Miles Blackstone House. This may be the same Miles Blackstone (1806-1875) who is described in Vol. II of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918):

Miles Blackstone was for years an active and honored resident of the town of Branford, where he was prominently connected with agricultural interests. He was born April 1, 1806, [. . . . He] spent the days of his boyhood and youth in Branford and was indebted to the public school system of the locality for the educational opportunities which he enjoyed and which qualified him for life’s practical and responsible duties. He was early trained to farm work and became much interested in that pursuit, which he chose as a life vocation. He concentrated his entire time and attention upon farming and kept in touch with the most progressive methods of planting and developing his crops. Industry, economy and unswerving integrity were among his sterling traits and brought to him a gratifying measure of success as the years passed on. He brought his fields under a high state of cultivation and added to his place many modern improvements. The latest machinery was used to facilitate the work of the fields and his labors were at all times most intelligently directed, so that substantial results followed his work.

[. . .] He passed away in the faith of the Episcopal church, of which he had long been a devoted member. He always attended the church services and contributed liberally to its support. His political endorsement was given to the republican party and he kept well informed on the issues of the day, which he studied closely, so that he was able to support his position by intelligent argument. Of him a contemporary biographer has written: “Mr. Blackstone was a most unassuming and modest gentleman of the old school, with a kindly heart, and was greatly honored and respected in the community in which he lived.”

Nova Scotia District School (1853)

The Nova Scotia District School was one of the old one-room district school houses of the Town of Watertown. Originally located at the corner of Fern Hill Road and Route 6, it was built in 1853 and served as a school until 1929. The building was disassembled in 1990 and rebuilt in Munson Park at 17 DeForest Street, behind the Gridley Store and the Munson House. The Old Nova Scotia School House reopened in 1993 as a museum, maintained by the Watertown Historical Society and furnished as it would have been in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Talcott Brothers Mill (1870)

The mill village of Talcotville in Vernon had its origins in the cotton-spinning mill set up by John Warburton in 1802 along the Tankerhoosen River in North Bolton (now Vernon). In 1835 the Warburton Mill came under the sole ownership of Nathaniel O. Kellogg, who established a manufacturing village there called Kelloggville. In 1856 the property was bought by the brothers, Horace Welles Talcott and Charles D. Talcott, who renamed the village Talcottville. The brothers continued to use the original mill buildings until a fire destroyed them in 1869. The mill complex (47 Main Street) was rebuilt the following year. A number of additions have been made over the years to the original two-and-a-half story wood frame and brick masonry building with open belfry. Brick additions were made on the south and west sides around 1880, a frame and brick addition on the north side around 1900 and a steel and brick addition, also on the north end, around 1920. The Talcott family sold the mill c. 1940/1950. Further additions were made by later owners, the last being completed in 1963. Left vacant in recent years, work is now underway to convert the Old Talcott Mill into a mixed-use building with residential apartments and commercial space, an example of adaptive reuse of a historic structure. (more…)

Temple Beth Torah (1824)

The building at 130 Main Street in Wethersfield was built as a Methodist church and is today a synagogue. The first Methodist sermon in Wethersfield was preached in 1790 by Jesse Lee in the North Brick School House, now the site of Standish Park. Wethersfield was visited by itinerant Methodist preachers until a circuit preacher for Wethersfield, Newington, New Britain, and Kensington was appointed in 1821. Early services were held at Academy Hall until the Methodist Episcopal Church was built at 130 Main Street in 1824. The church was moved 26 feet onto a new stone foundation in 1882. A fire in 1941 destroyed the church’s original Sunday school addition of 1913 and damaged the sanctuary. The church was repaired and a new Sunday school addition, twice as large, was constructed. The church soon outgrew its 1824 building and in 1959 moved to a new church at 150 Prospect Street.

The Jewish Community Group of Wethersfield was formed in 1954. The group purchased the former Methodist Church on Main Street in 1960 and adopted the name Temple Beth Torah. The building was converted to become a synagogue and the new Temple’s Day of Dedication was celebrated on May 28, 1961. Work began in 1964 to give the Temple a new facade. The former church’s steeple was removed and a new entrance in the colonial revival style was added.