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

Bacon’s Marble Block (1868)

Constructed in 1868 as a grand new three-story commercial block with classical detailing, Bacon’s Marble Block is located at at 128 State Street in New London. It was built by Morris W. Bacon, manager of the Pequot & Ocean Transit Steamship Co., who ran a billiard hall in the building. The structure’s original cornice was replaced with a mansard roof before 1901. Beatrice Cuming, a painter, lived and worked on the building‘s upper floors in the 1930s and 1940s. In more recent years, the building sat derelict for twenty-five years, but was then restored with commercial space on the first floor and apartments above. Bacon’s Marble Block also features a faded Uneeda Biscuit sign. The building next door, at 140 State Street, was built in 1873.

The house at 895 Saybrook Road in Haddam was built by the brothers Nehemiah and John Brainerd to serve as a social hall called Brainerd Hall. The brothers owned a granite quarry that they opened in 1792. Brainerd Hall was constructed soon after the brothers’ uncle Hezekiah Brainerd and his wife Elizabeth acquired the land from Elizabeth’s father, John Wells, in 1794. After John Brainerd’s death in 1841, the hall housed students at the nearby Brainerd Academy, a school established by the Brainerd brothers.. After 1857, Erastus G. Dickinson operated the Golden Bull Tavern in the building. It remained in the Dickinson family until 1964.

Alfred M. Bailey House (1853)

The section of Middlefield called Baileyville was named for the family which first settled the area in the late eighteenth century. A later member of that family was Alfred M. Bailey (1822-1885), who contributed to Middlefield’s industrial development in the nineteenth century. He established a button factory along Ellen Doyle Brook with Andrew Coe in the 1840s. He also constructed the Lake Beseck Dam, one of the earliest arch-gravity type dams ever built. Completed in 1848, the dam provided a regular water supply for the mills downstream all year long. Raised in 1852 and in 1870, each time by five feet, the dam was rebuilt in 1938. Bailey’s house, at 148 Baileyville Road, was built around 1853. It has a later Queen Anne/Italianate addition and side porch.

Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, Willimantic (1958)

Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Willimantic began in 1916. A two-story at 226 Valley St was converted to a house of worship and rectory for its first pastor, Rev Joseph Kurila. Fr Joseph lived on the top floor with his family while the bottom floor was converted into a chapel. On November 3, 1948, the Holy Trinity Community purchased a parcel of land on the corner of Valley Street and Mansfield Avenue on which to build a permanent church. The foundation was poured in 1950, but due to financial limitations the church was not completed and consecrated until 1958. Church membership experienced a decline in the 1980s and 1990s, but has grown again since 2000 with the active support of the UConn Orthodox Christian Fellowship.

Middlesex Mutual Assurance Building (1867)

The building at 179 Main Street in Middletown was built in 1867 to house the office of the Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company (established in 1836) and commercial tenants. The third floor contained a meeting hall for fraternal organizations. A rear addition was built in 1891 to accommodate the Southern New England Telephone Company and behind the addition a theater was constructed in 1892. The third floor then was used for lounges for theater patrons. The Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co. moved to a new building on Court Street in 1927.

Josephine Bingham House (1860)

The Josephine Bingham House, at 22 North Road in Windham Center, is an Italianate T-shaped residence with a gable roof. Built in 1860, it was the residence of Miss Josephine Waldo Bingham (born 1846), who lived with her father, Waldo Bingham, and her step-mother, Elizabeth H. Bingham and continued to reside in the house after their deaths. She furnished wallpaper to St. Paul’s Church in 1888 and was an alternate Lady Manager of Connecticut for the World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893.

George Darlin Apartments (1892)

Now used as office space, the brick building at 96-98 Connecticut Boulevard in East Hartford was built in 1892 as an apartment building with four tenements. The building’s earliest recorded owner was George W. Darlin (1825-1916), who according to his advertisement in Geer’s Directory, was in the livery and trucking business, real estate and tenements and was a dealer in wool and coal in East Hartford. Darlin summered at Middle Beach in Westbrook. In the 1930s the apartment building was known as “The Clifford.”