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

John Fuller House (1824)

The house at 463 Halliday Avenue in Suffield was built in 1824 by George Fuller. It remained in the Fuller family (and is known as the John Fuller House) until the Town of Suffield bought the property in 1887 to serve as a Town Farm. The house became the town’s “poorhouse” or “alms house,” whose able-bodied residents were required to work at the adjacent farm. In 1886, a man known as “Old Cato” died in the house who had been a slave owned by Major John Davenport in Stamford in the years before the War of 1812. The house was sold back to private ownership at auction in 1952. (more…)

Timothy Wadsworth House (1829)

The will of Eliphalet Wadsworth, who died in 1823, deeded his land in Farmington to his relative Timothy Wadsworth, but also gave life use of the property to his widow Mary. In 1829, Timothy Wadsworth replaced the original eighteenth-century (1795?) house with a new Greek Revival one. Here he lived with his wife Mary until he died in 1841. She continued to reside there until she passed away in 1862. Their children sold the property in 1865. According to tradition, the house was a station on the Underground Railroad. In helping fugitive slaves, the Wadsworth’s made use of the passenger boats on the Farmington Canal, which ran through their property behind their house. The Timothy Wadsworth House, which is located at 340 Main Street in Farmington, is now used for offices, having been renovated and expanded for that purpose, construction being completed in 2008.

Anshei Israel Synagogue (1936)

Like Knesseth Israel in Ellington and Agudas Achim in Hebron, Anshei Israel, at 142 Newent Road in Lisbon, is an example of one of Connecticut’s rural synagogues. A Colonial Revival building, it was built in 1936 on land given by Harry Rothenberg, a member of the congregation. The synagogue’s fifteen founding families were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia who lived in Lisbon and other nearby towns. More immigrants from eastern Europe joined the congregation in the wake of World War II. The building is now maintained by the Lisbon Historical Society.

Ephraim Bound House (1801)

The gambrel-roofed saltbox house at 43 Main Street, facing toward Ferry Street in Essex, was built in 1801 by Ephraim Bound. In 1828, it was purchased by Timothy Starkey, Jr. (he lived next door), who erected a store connected to the house and at a right angle from its northeast corner. The store was operated by Starkey’s son-in-law Joseph Ellsworth and then by a grandson, Timothy Starkey Hayden. The Hayden family occupied the house until 1926. The original store, destroyed in the 1920s, was replaced by a new commercial building in the 1960s. The house is currently also used for retail space.

Charles D. Talcott House (1865)

In 1856, the brothers Horace Welles Talcott and Charles D. Talcott bought the Warburton Mill in Vernon from the estate of Nathaniel Kellogg. They then began to build up the industrial village of Talcottville. Across from the mill, the brothers constructed twin Italianate mansions for themselves at 36 and 48 Main Street. The Horace W. Talcott House (48 Main Street) retains its original appearance, but the Charles D. Talcott House (36 Main Street) was altered in 1920 with elements of the Spanish Eclectic style.

Christ Church Rectory, Watertown (1846)

The former Rectory of Christ Church in Watertown was built in 1846 at 37 The Green. It was originally an Italianate villa-style structure, but the building was raised to three stories in 1912 and remodeled in the Colonial Revival style with an open two-story porch on the south end. These alterations may have been the work of Waterbury architect Wilfred Griggs.

Sabbath Day House, Durham (1780)

In the colonial period, Connecticut residents were required by law to attend all-day church services on Sunday. Meeting Houses were unheated and a mid-day break allowed people to eat and warm up before the afternoon services. For those who lived too far away to return home during this break time, towns sometimes built small “Sabbath Day Houses” where they could take shelter. Several Sabbath Day Houses were once located on Durham Green, but were taken down as the attendance requirement ended at the start of the nineteenth century. One surviving structure, built around 1780, was moved to Indian Lane in Durham and converted into a residence. Facing destruction in 1966, it was moved back to the Green and restored by the Durham Historical Society.

A description of Durham’s Sabbath Day Houses is related in William Chauncey Fowler’s History of Durham (1866) as follows:

These houses were from twenty to twenty-five feet in length, and from ten to twelve feet in breadth, and one story high with a chimney in the middle dividing the whole space into two rooms with a partition between them, for the accommodation of two families, who united in building the house. The furniture consisted of a few chairs, a table, plates and dishes; some iron utensil, it may be, for warming food which had been cooked. Besides the Bible, there was sometimes a book on experimental religion, like Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, or Allein’s Alarm. On the morning of the Sabbath the mother of the family with provident care, put up her store of comforts for the dinner, substantial or slight fare as most convenient, a bottle of cider almost of course. The family then set off from their home in a large two horse sleigh, or on saddles and pillions. They stopped at the Sabbathday house, kindled a blazing fire, and then went forth “to shiver in the cold during the morning services.” At noon they hurried back to their warm room. After they had taken their meal and by turns drank from the pewter mug, thanks were returned. Then the sermon came under review, from the notes taken by the father of the family, or a chapter was read from the Bible, or a paragraph from some favorite author, the service concluding with prayer or singing. After again visiting the sanctuary, the family would return to the Sabbath-day house if the cold was severe, before they sought their home. The fire was then extinguished, the door was locked, and the house remained undisturbed during the week.

In time the custom of repairing to these houses changed; the houses themselves became dilapidated or furnished a refuge for the poor. They were better suited to those times when so much was thought of private family religion, than they would be to ours, when religion has become more of a public and social concern. The last Sabbath-day house which I remember, stood on the land owned by the first minister. It was occupied by John King, a Hessian deserter from the British army. It was owned by one of the Nortons. The present writer can recollect as many as half a dozon of these houses. They grew up out of the type of religion which existed at that time. It was a family religion, rather than a public one.