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

David Sage House (1770)

The house at 1062 Worthington Ridge in Berlin is known as the David Sage House in the nomination for the Worthington Ridge Historic District. It is also known as the George Porter House. Built c. 1770, it has elaborate Georgian detailing on its front facade. Among its residents were Dr. Josiah Meigs Ward. In 1825, Berlin suffered an epidemic of the Spotted Fever. As related in Catharine M. North’s History of Berlin (1916):

Dr. Josiah M. Ward was then in his prime, and he had sixty cases of the typhoid on his hands. Day and night he rode and visited his patients until he was so exhausted that he would sleep anywhere, even on horseback. Parson Graves and his family in Westfield were all down with the fever, and it was while in attendance there that Dr. Ward fell asleep on the steps of the church opposite the house. He awoke in a chill—the precursor of the fever, from which in his worn condition he could not rally. He died August 25, 1823, at the age of forty-three. Mrs. Ward and three of their children took the fever. One morning the clock struck eight and the children did not come down to breakfast. Diadema, a half sister, went to the chamber and said, “It is late, you must get up.” She lifted the little Samuel, four years old, and carried him down the stairs, in her arms. On the way he spat on the floor, and Diadema reproved him. The children were never allowed to do such a thing as that in the house.

In was the beginning of the sickness. In twenty-four hours the child was dead. Mary was sick two days and died. Laura’s fever ran two or three weeks and she recovered. The mother was restored to health after a second attack of the disease.

In the late nineteenth century, the house was owned by Burr Kellog Fields (1856-1898), a civil engineer who graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1877. According to his obituary in the Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. XXIV, No. 8 (October 1898):

in 1886 Mr. Field accepted an appointment as Assistant Engineer of the Berlin Iron Bridge Company, of East Berlin, Conn. His advancement with this company was very rapid, and at the time of his death he occupied the important position of Vice-President, having full charge of the making of all contracts. During Mr. Field’s connection with this company its business was much extended, and its product introduced into all parts of the world. In achieving this Mr. Field had no small part, and his death has been a severe loss, not only to the company, but also to his associates.

John S. Cheney House (1869)

John S. Cheney (1827-1910) was one of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers in Manchester. His house at 43 Forest Street, near the Cheney mills, was built in 1869.

John Cookson House (1837)

The Greek Revival house at 61 Main Street in Middletown was built in 1837 for John Cookson, who was pastor of the First Baptist Church from 1828 to 1839. The house originally stood on the east side of South Main Street, opposite the church, which is no longer standing (the current Baptist church was built further north on Main Street in 1842). The house was purchased by the city’s Redevelopment Agency in 1972 and in 1977 it was moved to its current address as part of the South End Restoration project. It is now used as offices, as are two other historic houses that were relocated as part of the project: the William Southmayd House and the Caleb Fuller House.

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Stony Creek Church of Christ Congregational (1903)

Church of Christ Congregational, Stony Creek

The Congregational Church in the village of Stony Creek in Branford was gathered in 1877 and soon purchased a building known as Union Chapel for its services. Union Chapel had been constructed in 1866 by the Union Religious Society, formed in 1865 by Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists in Branford as a missionary outreach to Stony Creek. The old wood structure was destroyed by fire in 1900. It was replaced by the current Stony Creek Church of Christ Congregational, a Norman Gothic edifice constructed between 1901 and 1903 of Stony Creek red granite. A basement kitchen and meeting room were added in 1907.

West Street School (1760)

The West Street School is a one-room schoolhouse at 1432 West Street in Southington. It was erected about 1760 and was in continuous operation, serving the northwest quarter of town, until 1946. It has been little changed over the years, retaining its eighteenth-century exterior features and a nineteenth-century interior, which includes a pot-bellied wood stove. The site also has the school’s associated outbuildings: a woodshed and a privy. In 1933, the West Street School Alumni Association was formed. In 1947, a year after the school closed permanently, this group, by then called the West Street School and Community Association, obtained a 99-year lease on the building from the town. The West Street School is currently maintained by the Southington Historical Society. The school originally sat closer to the roadbed, but West Street was widened and lowered in front of the school in 1977, so that the building is now at least twelve feet above the road.

Burbank-Wolfe House (1864)

Yesterday’s post featured the c. 1875 Christian Swartz House, which is today part of an upscale housing complex called Haviland Gates in South Norwalk. Another Victorian-era home that is part of Haviland Gates is the Burbank-Wolfe House at 12 Haviland Street, built c. 1864. It contains two of the development’s 21 apartments. Unlike the Swartz House, the Burbank-Wolfe House was moved in 2002 to its current location from 61 South Main Street, where the City built a new police station. In the early twentieth century, the house was owned by Dr. Robert M. Wolfe (died 1940), who served as mayor of South Norwalk from 1909 to 1910 and again from 1912 to 1913. He was the last mayor of the municipality of South Norwalk before it was integrated into the City of Norwalk in 1913.

Christian Swartz House (1875)

Christian Swartz (1846-1932) served as mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882. He was born in Württemberg, Germany and came to America with his parents in 1849 at the age of three. In 1868, in partnership with Jeremiah Bernd of Danbury, Swartz opened a cigar shop in South Norwalk called C. Swartz and Company. In 1880, this became the Old Well Cigar Company. As related in Vol. IV of Men of Mark in Connecticut (1906), by William R. Goodspeed:

In 1882 the business of South Norwalk had grown to such large proportions that another bank was deemed a necessity. In company with Hon. R. H. Rowan, Hon. John H. Ferris, Hon. Talmadge Baker, and other prominent men, he was one of the organizers of the City National Bank, and has continued as a director of said bank since that time. In the re-organizatíon of the Norwalk Lock Company, he became one of the directors and has continued as such.

Christian Swartz‘s public services began before he entered business life. At the age of eighteen years he enlisted in the Union cause in the Civil War and served until peace was established, a period of ten months. Since that time his public services have been political rather than military, and to him politics has always meant service to his fellows of the best and highest kind. He has followed the tenets of the Democratic political body and became a Gold Democrat. He was city councilman in 1878, mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882, sheriff of Fairfield County from 1884 to 1887, and he has been a member of the state shell-fish commission since 1893. He is the present chairman of the city water commission, president of the board of estimates and taxation of the town of Norwalk and President of the Norwalk Hospital. He has been in many other ways a strong factor in local politics and civic growth and prosperity.

A man of deep religious convictions and training, Mr. Swartz is a devoted and regular member of the South Norwalk Congregational Church. He is a chairman of the business committee of that church and a member of the Christian Inquiry Club connected with that body. He has many fraternal and social ties, and is a Mason, and a Knight Templar. He was elected Grand Commander of the Knights Templar of Connecticut in 1892. He is a member of the South Norwalk Club, the Norwalk Club, and the Norwalk Country Club. He is fond of outdoor life, particularly at the sea-shore, and of late years has become a devotee of physical culture.

Swartz’s Italianate house, built circa 1875, is at 16 Haviland Street in South Norwalk. It contains two apartments and is part of a 21-unit rental housing enclave called Haviland Gates.