The Greek Revival house at 568 Main Street in Portland was built in 1845 and remodeled in 1926. It was originally the home of George Pettis, a shoemaker. In 1927 the house was owned by Gothard A. Olson (1892-1984), whose flooring company, Gothard A Olson & Sons, is still in existence. The house was next owned by Aline E. Roman, who sold Harold Roman the adjacent land which he built the house at 564 Main Street in 1936-1937.
The house at 171 Ferry Lane in South Glastonbury was built circa 1850 by James Lyman Kellam (1824-1897), a farmer, on land his father, James Kellam (1789-1878), had acquired in 1816. It is a Greek Revival-style house with a later nineteenth-century front porch. In 1893, James Lyman Kellam took over the job of keeping the system of kerosene lamps along the shore of the Connecticut River that guided ships to the correct channel at a challenging location where the river bends. After his death, two of his sons who lived in the house took over the job: Arthur Lyman Kellam (1873-1936), who was the official light keeper, and Walter Bulkeley Kellam (1863-1958), who became assistant keeper in 1905. For decades, Walter Kellam, who was blind, would make his way down a narrow catwalk every night to light the oil lamps. On May 31, 1931, the Hartford Courant had a profile of Walter Kellam (“Blind, He Lights the Way for Others: For Past 25 Years, Walter Kellam Has Tended River Beacons At South Glastonbury”), in which he describes lighting the lamps during a blizzard in 1926 and during the flood of 1927. Near the house is a historic barn which today is part of Horton Farm. The farm also has a number of historic tobacco sheds.
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Today is the Fourteenth Anniversary of Historic Buildings of Connecticut, which started with its first post (the Joseph Webb House in Wethersfield) back in 2007! Thank you all who follow my posts here, which have featured over 4,346 buildings in 136 towns! I hope to someday get to buildings in the other 33 towns!
The large commercial building at 1-17 West Main Street in Mystic, which has contained numerous businesses over the years, was erected in 1907 by the brothers Mark and Osgood Gilbert. It housed the offices of the Gilbert Transportation Company, the brothers’ shipyard where they built and repaired schooners. (There is a photo that shows the building they previously occupied on the site before they built the current structure). The company went bankrupt in 1909. There was a fire in 1915 that gutted the building. It was started because of an over-heated flue in Green’s Bakery and spread to a theater that showed silent films. The building remained vacant until 1924, when the structure was rebuilt and renamed the Main Block. The building continues to be used for retail stores and apartments. There is a video about the building:
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The building at 12 Chestnut Street in Bethel was once a commercial structure, with storefronts on the first floor and a two-level residence above. Walker Ferry (1822-1906), a shoemaker, had started business on the site in 1845. In about 1850, he tore down the earlier building and replaced it with the current one, which he occupied for many decades. At first he manufactured shoes on the first floor, employing a number of men, but later ceased shoemaking and switched to operating a retail shoe store, retiring shortly before his death in 1906. A c. 1890 image shows the shoe store on the right and McDowell’s Meat Market on the left.
Jacob Pledger (1762-1822) emigrated from England in 1795 with the family of his wife, Sarah Watkinson, and settled in Middletown, where he worked as an agent for the Middletown Brewery. In 1800 he acquired land from his father-in-law Samuel Watkinson, Sr. (1745-1816) and in 1803 erected at 717 Newfield Street what is now one of five surviving brick Federal-style houses in Middletown. Pledger farmed the surrounding land, which was evenly divided along both sides of Newfield Street. [His daughter Eliza would be a student at Sara Pierce‘s Litchfield Female Academy in 1814] Samuel Miller (1782-1856) purchased the house and farm in 1813. It was later owned by his son, Augustus Henry Miller (1816-1895), and then by Augusts’ daughter, Bernice M. Dunklee (1872-1965), whose husband, Henry F. Dunklee (1905-1961), managed the farm. Their son, Earle M. Dunklee (1898-1976) acquired the property in 1953 and sold it to the city in 1969. The house was purchased by Dr. Peter Nelson in 1975 in a sale that included architectural covenants to protect the integrity of the building‘s historic structure. Dr. Nelson adapted the building into professional offices (it is home to Dr. Nelson’s Advanced Cosmetic Dentistry).
The building at 5 Ives Street in Danbury was built in 1883-1884 and served as the city’s Fire Department Headquarters until 1969. Designed by architect Joel Foster, it had vehicle storage on the first floor and parlors (later converted into sleeping quarters) for volunteer fire companies on the second floor. Today the building is home to Two Steps Downtown Grill. Next door (pictured on the right in the image above) is the building at 1 Ives Street. Designed by William Webb Sunderland, it was built in 1893 as a meat warehouse and offices.
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