Built around 1830, the house at 27 Park Avenue in Windsor is one of many examples in the town of early nineteenth-century brick construction. The earliest known owner of the house was Clarissa Loomis, who sold it to Daniel Payne, a farmer, in 1855.
The house at 3129 Whitney Avenue in Hamden was built circa 1835 by Jared Dickerman (1798-1891), a grandson of Jonathan Dickerman I. Jared Dickerman had purchased the land in 1829. Two of his daughters were teachers in the local public schools. The house remained in the family until the 1930s and has more recently been used for law offices.
Austin M. Lester, a successful whaling ship captain, master of the Meteor and the Congress, built the house at 5 Riverside Place in Gales Ferry, Ledyard, in 1846 to become his home after he returned from his last voyage in 1847. After Capt. Lester’s death in 1862, the house passed to his son, Austin A. Lester, who sold it in 1867 to Erasmus Darwin Rogers, who was also a whaling captain. Capt. Rogers is credited as being the first man to land on Heard Island in the South Indian Ocean. He began the era of seal hunting on the uninhabited island. This lasted until 1880, by which time sealers had wiped out most of the island’s elephant seal population. After Capt. Rogers’s death in 1906, his daughter sold the house in Gales Ferry, which has since passed through various owners.
Located at 1175 (1171-1177) Main Street in East Hartford is Comstock Hall, built in 1899 to house a theater (later converted to a roller-skating rink and then demolished) and offices. The classically proportioned building was constructed by Lewis Comstock, a railroad engineer and descendant of an old East Hartford family. In 1926, Comstock erected an adjoining building to the south (1165-1169 Main Street, aka 2 Orchard Street). The two buildings are joined by a continuous first-floor storefront cornice, but the 1899 structure is taller and has a more elaborate classical revival design.
Harriet Welles (1856-1931) married Sturgis P. Turner in 1879. They occupied a house on Main Street (either built by them around 1879 or built earlier in 1830). After her husband’s death in 1916, Harriet Welles Turner later married John W. Burnham. Harriet Burnham, who died in 1931, willed her estate in trust for the benefit of her husband. When he died in 1941, her will provided $350,000 to the Town of Glastonbury for a public library to be constructed on the site of her former home on Main Street. The house was moved in 1951 by the R.F. Jones Company to its current address at 2247 Main Street. The new Welles-Turner Memorial Library was dedicated on October 5, 1952.
The building at 484-494 Main Street in Middletown, built in 1889-1890 and considered one of the first “modern” stores in town, was once home to the Caulkins & Post Company. The business sold carpets, drapes and furniture and soon expanded to sell automobiles around 1903. This latter business was so successful that the company erected a building for its car dealership across the street in 1905. The company changed its name to F.L. Caulkins and Co. in 1906.
The church at 19 May Street in Hartford was built in 1929 as the Adventist Church of Hartford. Today the building is used as the food pantry run by Glory Chapel International Cathedral. (more…)
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