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

Thomas Danforth House (1746)

Thomas Danforth was a noted pewterer. He produced a variety of pewter tableware and was the first of several generations of pewterers. Born in 1703 in Taunton, Massachusetts, Thomas Danforth was one of fourteen children of Rev. Samuel Danforth, the town’s Congregational minister. Thomas moved to Norwich in 1733 and opened a pewterer’s and brazier’s shop on the Norwichtown Green. Two of his sons, Thomas II and John, also became pewterers. Thomas II set up shop in Middletown and became the father of six more pewterers. John worked with his father until the latter retired in 1773, when the firm of Thomas Danforth & Son was dissolved (Thomas I died in 1786). John‘s son Samuel later took over his business in 1792, finally selling it in 1802 and moving to Ellsworth, Ohio. Thomas Danforth I’s Norwich home was the house at 25 Scotland Road. It was built in 1746.

William A. Parmalee House (1840)

One of Durham‘s best examples of the Greek Revival style is the house at 313 Main Street (which was 138 Main Street before the numbers were changed a few years ago). The house was built around 1840 on land acquired the year before by Phineas Parmalee, a shoemaker, whose own house and shop were across the street. He sold the house for $1200 to his son, William A. Parmalee, in 1842. William A. Parmalee, a manufacturer of shoes like his father, had married Mary J. Camp in 1840. He also served as Town Clerk and as a representative to the General Assembly.

First Congregational Church of Watertown (1839)

The Ecclesiastical Society of Westbury, now Watertown, was established in 1739 and the first Congregational meeting house was built in 1741 on a corner of the Old Watertown Cemetery at French and Main Streets. The second meeting house was constructed in 1772 where the Town Hall of Watertown now stands. The third and current building of the First Congregational Church of Watertown was erected in 1839 on a hill overlooking the town’s Public Green. The building was designed and erected by master builder Steven Baldwin, whose contract called for a structure that would match the size and style of the Plymouth Congregational Church, built the year before. (more…)

Farnham Parmelee House (1818)

The former residence, now a gift shop, at 12 North Main Street in Essex, was originally located about 150 feet south of its current location. Built by Farnham Parmelee in 1818, it was purchased by Jacob Arkin in 1919, who moved it to make way for the Arkin Block, a brick commercial building.

Curtis Building, Bristol (1904)

The Curtis Building is a blonde brick commercial building at 255 Main Street in Bristol. It has apartments on the upper floors and shops on the first floor that still have their original fronts with cast iron columns.

King’s Field House (1723)

At 827 North Street in Suffield is a house built around 1723 by Lt. William King on a lot given to him by his father, James King. The lot was called King’s Great Field and the house is known as King’s Field House. William King (1695-1774) was a wealthy landowner, weaver and militia officer. He moved an earlier house to the property to form the rear of his new residence. The property was inherited by his son, William King, and then by his grandson, Seth King. The house was restored in the 1930s by Delphina Hammer Clark, author of Pictures of Suffield Houses (1940) and Notebooks on Houses in Suffield (1960). The house is now a Bed & Breakfast called Kingsfield.

Daniel Goffe Phipps House (1873)

At 614 Chapel Street in New Haven is Second Empire mansard-roofed house built in 1873 for Daniel Goffe Phipps (1821-1903). He had had many adventures serving as a captain in the U.S Navy and spent two years in the California gold mines during the Gold Rush. In St. Louis in 1851, he married “Mary E. Hunt, daughter of Captain James Hunt, a prominent West India merchant of New Haven,” as recorded in the History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time (1887), by Edward E. Atwater. That book goes on to relate that

In the fall of 1864 he ceased going to sea, and became identified with the New Haven Water Company; beginning soon afterward the manufacture of hydraulic pipe and the profession of hydraulic enginering [sic] and building of waterworks, his present business.

There are patents in his name for hydraulic water pipes. Daniel Goffe Phipps was later president of the West Haven Water Company. He died in 1903.