First Baptist Church of Plymouth (1915)

St. Peter's/First Baptist Church

St. Peter’s Episcopal parish in Plymouth was established in 1740. The parish’s first church edifice was built on the northeast corner of Plymouth Green in 1796. The church burned down in 1915, but was quickly rebuilt with a new design constructed of fieldstone. The stones were gathered by parishioners from their own fields and walls. In 1996, St. Peter’s merged with Trinity Parish in Thomaston to form St. Peter’s-Trinity Church. The former St. Peter’s Church in Plymouth then became the First Baptist Church of Plymouth. This congregation, which began its ministry in Waterbury in 1803, held its first worship service in Plymouth on the Sunday following Easter in 1997.

Frederick Ives House (1866)

478 Orange Street, New Haven

Frederick Ives (1832-1883) was an axle manufacturer in Hamden. Continuing the business started by his father, Henry Ives, he formed Frederick Ives & Co. with Willis E. Miller and George E. Ives during the Civil War. When George E. Ives left to partner with L.F. Goodyear, the company continued as Ives & Miller, later called the Mount Carmel Axle Works. Frederick Ives’ house at 478 Orange Street in New Haven was built in 1866. It has Indian-style columns of a kind favored by architect Henry Austen.

Mansfield General Store (1886)

Mansfield General Store

The general store at 534 Storrs Road in Mansfield was built in 1886 by Charles H. Weeks. Above the store was Elmwood Hall, where town meetings and events were held. John Starkweather briefly owned the store in 1897 before selling it to Alfred Oden, who ran it for thirty years. In 1906, Oden, who lived above the store, fired shots from the balcony at two escaping burglars who had just blown open the store safe. One of them left behind a derby riddled with shotgun holes! In 1928, Oden sold the store to Thomas Arthur Barrows and Gustav Clauson. After the latter died, Barrows bought his share. He was later joined by his sister, Gertrude Burnham, and for many years the store was called Barrows and Burnham. It is now known as the the Mansfield General Store. The Mansfield Center Post Office was located here from 1899 to 1954.

William H. Taft Mansion (1870)

Taft Mansion

The Mansard-roofed house at 111 Whitney Avenue in New Haven (pdf) was built in 1870. It is known as the William H. Taft Mansion because the former President (1909-1913) (soon to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court) owned the house around the time of the First World War, although he never actually lived in it. He sold the house in 1921. Extensively remodeled in 2008, the house was recently used as the offices of Research Edge, an independent research firm, which later became Hedgeye Risk Management. More recently, the house has become home to the William F. Buckley Jr. Program, a Yale conservative group founded in 2010.

David Hale House (1795)

David Hale House

Reverend David Hale of Coventry was the younger brother of Nathan Hale. He served as pastor of the Newent Congregational Church in Lisbon from 1790 to 1803. In 1795 he built a house in Lisbon (4 Newent Road) that continued to be used as the church parsonage until the late 1960s when it became a private residence. It is now home to an antiques shop known as The Skeleton Key at the Hale House.

As described in the History of New London County, Connecticut, with Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Prominent Men (1882), compiled by D. Hamilton Hurd:

In June, 1790, Mr. David Hale, of Coventry, was ordained. He was a brother of the accomplished and chivalrous Capt. Nathan Hale, who was executed as a spy on Long Island by order of Sir William Howe. Mr. Hale was a man of very gentle and winning manners, of exalted piety, and a fine scholar. He carried his idea of disinterested benevolence to such an extent that, if acted upon, it would overturn all social institutions. He thought it to be a man’s duty to love his neighbor, not only as himself, with the same kind of love, but also to the same degree, so that he should not prefer, even in thought, that a contingent calamity, such as the burning of a house or the loss of a child, should fall on his neighbor rather than on himself. Mr. Hale supplied the deficiencies of his salary by keeping a boarding-school. As an instructor he was popular; his house was filled with pupils from all parts of the county, but ill health and a constitutional depression of spirits obliged him to resign this employment, and eventually his pastoral office. His mind and nerves were of that delicate and sensitive temperament which cannot long endure the rude shock of earthly scenes. He was dismissed in April, 1803, returned to Coventry, and there died in 1822.