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

Richard Brown House (1850)

In the nineteenth century, Cheshire became famous for its barite mines. Barite was discovered in Cheshire around 1840 and mining activity continued until 1878. Many miners from Cornwall in England settled in Cheshire to work in the mines. One such miner was Richard Brown, who rented the house at 224 Cornwall Avenue. It was built in the 1850s as an investment property by Edward A. Cornwall, a prominent citizen of Cheshire. Cornwall sold many other parcels of land from the Cornwall Farm, which went back in his family to the 1790s. Richard Brown later purchased the house with a mortgage held by Cornwall. The house was a twin of the residence next door at 214 Cornwall Avenue, which was also a rental property erected by Cornwall. The house at 224 Cornwall has a later Victorian front porch. The large dormer on the west side of the house was added in the late 1970s. (pdf source)

9 West Mystic Avenue, Mystic (1889)

The Gothic Revival Cottage pictured above is located at 9 West Mystic Avenue in Mystic. It was built in 1889.

Eolia (1906)

Harkness Memorial State Park, located on Long Island Sound in Waterford, was once the estate of Edward Harkness (1874-1940) and his wife Mary Harkness. Harkness, one of the richest men in America, inherited great wealth from his father, Stephen V. Harkness, who had been a silent partner of John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Corporation. Used by Harkness as a summer estate, it was called Eolia, named for the island home of Aeolus, Greek God of the winds. The mansion, designed by Lord & Hewlett of New York, was built in 1906 for Jessie and William Taylor, Mary Harkness’s sister and brother-in-law, who sold it the following year. Edward and Mary Harkness then hired their favorite architect James Gamble Rogers to do interior renovations and add a pergola to the property. The estate’s gardens were designed by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. Mary Harkness left the estate to the State of Connecticut in 1950. The mansion and grounds were restored in the 1990s by lead architect Roger Clarke, with contributions by architect Peter Clarke and consultant on historic gardens Rob Camp Fuoco. Today Eolia is a popular location for weddings (pdf about weddings). (more…)

St. Peter Church, New Britain (1900)

St. Peter Catholic Parish in New Britain was established to serve German and Austrian immigrants. The cornerstone for St. Peter Church, at 98 Franklin Square, was blessed by Bishop Lawrence S. McMahon on November 23, 1890 and the basement church was dedicated by Vicar General Father James Hughes on July 19 the following year. The completed church edifice was dedicated by Bishop Michael A. Tierney on February 4, 1900. At the turn of the century, many French Canadian immigrants joined the parish.

Bingham Hall, Yale University (1928)

Yale’s first building was constructed in 1718 where Bingham Hall now stands. One of the university’s freshman dormitories, Bingham Hall was built in 1928 and encloses the southeast corner of Yale’s Old Campus. Built of Longmeadow brownstone and cast stone, Bingham Hall was designed by Walter B. Chambers. Funds were donated by the children of Charles W. Bingham. With nine floors, it is one of the tallest on the Old Campus and its student residents make use of elevators. The original corner lantern has been replaced by a replica.

Walter Gwatkin House (1905)

There is some uncertainty about the date and exact address of the Walter Gwatkin House on Worthington Ridge in Berlin. The nomination form for the Worthington Ridge Historic District lists it as no. 1008 and gives the date as c. 1905. A walking tour booklet (doc) for the District gives the address as 1006 and the date as c. 1861, noting that the porch dates to the early 1900s. Walter Gwatkin (1856-1921) was a prosperous butcher, farmer and landowner. Catharine M. North, in her History of Berlin (1915), makes note of the house that existed before the current one:

In 1817 Horace Steele, Elishama Brandegee’s next door neighbor on the south, was engaged in the business of bookbinding. Afterwards he made bandboxes, which he carried to Hartford to sell to the milliners.

Mr. Steele’s children were Eliza (mother of the Rev. Andrew T. Pratt, missionary in Turkey), Caroline (Mrs. Joseph Booth), Mary, Jane, Lucy Ann (Mrs. Lorenzo Lamb), and William.

Their home, a large colonial house set well back from the street, was, in its day, socially a center of attraction, filled as it was with bright, merry young people. The old house was torn down by William Steele and the house which he built on its site is now owned by Walter Gwatkin.

Nathaniel Eliot House (1755)

The Nathaniel Eliot House, built in 1755, is located at 103 Whitfield Street in Guilford. Nathaniel Eliot was a farmer. He married Beulah, daughter of Joseph Parmelee, in 1754. Their daughter, Mary, married Israel Halleck, a tailor from Duchess County, New York. Their son was Fitz-Greene Halleck, the prominent nineteenth-century poet. As related in an obituary of the poet that appeared in Putnam’s Magazine (Vol. I, No. 2, February, 1868):

His father, Israel Halleck, who followed the calling of a tailor, was an emigrant from Dutchess County, New York. He died at Guilford in 1830, at the age of eighty-four; and is remembered in the village as a man fond of books, a great reader, of extraordinary memory, full of wit and anecdote, and of most courteous manners. The poet’s mother, Mary, daughter of Nathaniel Eliot, of Guilford, a lady of irreproachable worth, was a descendant of the Rev. John Eliot, the venerable “Apostle of the Indians.” She was married in her thirtieth year, and died in 1819, at the age of fifty-seven.