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

Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Company (1853)

The oldest parts of the Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Company‘s factory in Thomaston date to 1853. In that year, clockmaker Seth Thomas, who was unhappy buying brass for his clocks from companies in Waterbury, built his own brass mill on the Naugatuck River. In 1869 a new company was organized, Holmes, Booth & Atwood, which purchased the factory with the agreement that they would continue to supply brass for Seth Thomas clocks. The founders of the company had left the Waterbury firm of Holmes, Booth & Haydens and Hiram W. Hayden sued them over the fact that their new company’s name resembled the existing company’s name too closely. In 1871, the new group took the name Plume & Atwood–David Scott Plume was the company’s treasurer. The factory buildings were severely damaged in the 1955 flood. Since the late 1950s, other companies have utilized the old factory. (more…)

Daniel Hubbard House (1717)

Daniel Hubbard (1697-1751) of Guilford married Thankful Stone in 1728. After her death he married his second wife, Diana Ward, in 1730. Their son, Bela Hubbard, graduated from Yale and became an Episcopalian minister, serving at Christ Church in Guilford and later at Trinity Church in New Haven. Their daughter, Diana Hubbard, married Andrew Ward. Their daughter, Roxana Ward, married Eli Foote. Their daughter, Roxana Foote, married Lyman Beecher and was the mother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Daniel Hubbard‘s house, at 51-53 Broad Street in Guilford, was built in 1717. Unusually large for its time, the house has a large wing that was added in 1872.
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Andrew Coe House (1843)

In 1843, around the time he married his cousin Caroline Coe, Andrew Coe purchased land from the estate of his father, Bela Coe, and built the house at 458 Main Street in Middlefield soon thereafter. Andrew Coe ground and burned bone for sugar refining at a grist mill on the Beseck River. When he died in 1854, his nephew Russell Coe bought the mill and inherited the house. In 1856 he sold the house to Albert Skinner, who had a wood turning shop on the Beseck River. The house once had a wing with a post office that burned in 1934. A wing with a pharmacy replaced it in 1936.

Former Baptist Church, Cromwell (1853)

Former Baptist Church/American Legion Hall

The building at 349 Main Street in Cromwell was built in 1853 as a Baptist church and later served as an American Legion Hall. The church was organized in 1802. According to Rev. Myron Samuel Dudley’s History of Cromwell (1880):

In 1803 the church built a plain frame edifice Meeting-House on the West Green, and held their public meetings there until 1833, when the house was moved to the central part of the village and placed on a lot nearly opposite the present site of the Post Office. Worship continued in this house until Nov. 3, 1853, on which day a new house of worship, located a little North of the old one, built during the pastorate of the Rev. C. W. Potter and largely through his instrumentality, was dedicated. This latter edifice was remodeled, somewhat, internally in 1872, and is the house of worship of the church at the present time.

The church disbanded in 1936 and the building’s steeple was removed.

Charles A Gillin House (1895)

The house at 1035 Worthington Ridge in Berlin was built circa 1895. With its varied form, combination of clapboards and several types of shingles and ornamental woodwork, the house is an excellent example of the Queen Anne style. It was the home of Charles A Gillin, who was a surgeon. (more…)

Daniel Galpin House (1790)

The house at 914 Worthington Ridge in Berlin was built around 1790 for Deacon Daniel Galpin (1754-1744), a veteran of the Revolutionary War. In her History of Berlin (1916), Catherine M. North quotes a letter of Mrs. Margaret Dunbar Stuart describing the Deacon:

Deacon Daniel Galpin was brother to Col. Joseph Galpin and lived next door to Parson Goodrich, my grandfather. He was of a more ardent temperament than Col. Galpin. He spoke in prayer meetings, and was a warm abolitionist.

In a wing of his house was a shop where he whittled logs into pumps. Also his daughter Mary utilized this shop for her dame school.

One day there was a sudden noise and my brother, a little boy saying his letters, was greatly pleased to find the Deacon had fallen over his pump log.

At one time Deacon Galpin put up a sign on his pump shop, “Anti-Slavery Books for sale here.”

This subjected him to some persecution and it was torn down by the roughs of the village.

The house was moved to its current address in the late 1840s to make way for the building of the Congregational Church.

Hayden-Starkey Store (1809)

The Hayden-Starkey Store, at 48 Main Street in Essex, was only the second brick building in town when it was built in 1809. A warehouse and ships store, or chandlery, it was constructed by Samuel and Ebenezer Hayden, sons of Capt. Uriah Hayden, and was situated between their two residences. Their cousin, Richard Hayden, had recently built his house, Essex’s first brick building, nearby. Timothy Starkey, Jr., the Hayden brothers’ brother-in-law, became their partner in 1810. It is said that the British destroyed rope and took merchandise from this store during their raid on Essex in 1814. Remaining in the Hayden family for many years, the building became a residence in 1856.