The Southport Savings Bank was chartered in 1854. The bank’s building at 226 Main Street in Southport (in the town of Fairfield) was erected in 1863-1865 across from the Southport National Bank. The bank became a branch of People’s Savings Bank, Bridgeport (later People’s United Bank) in 1955. The bank branch closed on May 6, 2016.
In 1873, the Saybrook Bank erected a new building on Main Street in Essex (its previous building, built in 1849, was taken over by the Essex Savings Bank). The Saybrook Bank was reorganized in 1907 as the Essex National Bank, which remodeled the front facade of the building in 1936-1937 to the appearance it has today. The bank later merged with other banks and today the building houses a branch of Liberty Bank.
The Valley National Bank, with offices at the corner of Main and Bank Streets in Seymour, was formed in 1900. In 1904 it dissolved and was replaced by the Seymour Trust Company. The company erected a new building in 1922-1923 at 115 Main Street, which opened on October 26, 1923. Today the building is a branch of Bank of America. It has a single-story stone-faced addition, built in 1981, that stretches south of the main block. (more…)
West Hartford’s first bank, the West Hartford Trust Company, opened in 1926 and located at 4 North Main Street at the corner of Farmington Avenue. One of the building’s architects, Milton Hayman, was known for his Colonial Revival designs. The bank merged with Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. in the 1930s and today is a branch of Bank of America. (more…)
On the west bank of the Saugatuck River in Westport, at 2 Post Road West, is the National Hall Building. It was built in 1873 to house the First National Bank of Westport, two stores and a meeting hall called National Hall. The building was constructed at a time when the west bank of the river was Westport’s commercial and social hub and it represents the town’s growing prosperity after the Civil War. Horace Staples, a prominent Westport businessman and president of the bank was the driving force behind its construction. Various businesses have used the building over the years, including the Fairfield Furniture store and a luxury hotel, the recently closed Inn at National Hall, where President Bill Clinton once stayed. Today it is home to Vespa Italian Restaurant.
Calvary St. George is an Episcopal parish in Bridgeport. St. George’s Parish was organized in 1892 with a church, first known as St. John’s West End Chapel, at the corner of Clinton and Beechwood Avenues. The current church was built in 1930 at the same location, 755 Clinton Avenue. Calvary Episcopal Church, once located at North Avenue and Wells Street, later at 510 Summit Street, merged with St. George’s in 2005.
Now home to Teamsters Local #191, the house at 1139 Fairfield Avenue in Bridgeport was built in 1892 for Thomas Cooke Wordin. The house, originally known as “The Pines,” was designed by the Bridgeport-based architect Joseph W. Northrop, who also designed such buildings as the Taylor Memorial Library in Milford (1895) and the Colin M. Ingersoll House in New Haven (1896). The Wordin House was illustrated in The American Architect and Building News, Vol. XLI, no. 921 (August 19, 1893)
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