Col. James Loomis House (1822)

James Loomis House, Windsor

The house at 208 Broad Street in Windsor was built in 1822 for Colonel James Loomis (1779-1862). Built of bricks manufactured by the Mack Brick Company in Windsor, it was once one of a number of residences that once stood on Broad Street across from Broad Street Green. A descendant of Joseph Loomis, who settled in Windsor in 1639, Col. Loomis was the proprietor of the village store, which stood just south of his house. His wife, Abigail Sherwood Chaffee Loomis (1798-1868), inherited Nancy Toney (1774-1857), Connecticut’s last enslaved person, in 1821. The children of James and Abigail would found what is now the Loomis Chaffee School. The house remained a residence until 1970, when it was converted into a bank.

John Booth Burrall House (1916)

30 Church St

The building at 30 Church Street in Waterbury was built as a house for John Booth Burrall (1879-1920), an industrialist, in 1916, the year he married Mrs. Margaret Fallon Barber. It was designed in the Georgian Revival style by Aymar Embury II, the noted New York City architect. A wing was added to the rear of the house in 1919. Burrall died suddenly the following year while spending the winter in Palm Beach, Florida. The house later became Notre Dame Academy, a co-ed Catholic school. A modern brick classroom wing was added in 1965. Today the building is the Enlightenment School, an alternative learning program for Waterbury students with behavioral and truancy problems.

First Baptist Church of Waterbury (1917)

Former First Baptist Church, Waterbury

The First Baptist Church of Waterbury was organized in 1803. At first, meetings were held in members’ homes or outdoors. The first meeting house was built in 1818 at the Mill Mill Plain crossroads, two-and-a-half miles from the center of town. It had no paint, plaster or chimney and the seats were wooden benches without backs. The second house of worship was erected (after considerable financial difficulties) c. 1840 in the town center on South Main Street. It was later significantly remodeled and extended, the entrance being moved to the Bank Street side of the building (the church spire was later taken down after it was deemed unsafe). This church was later replaced by a new one, built on Grand Street and dedicated in 1883. It was destroyed by fire in 1912. The corner stone of the church’s fourth building, at 208 Grove Street (located in a primarily residential area), was laid on October 3, 1915 and the completed church was dedicated in 1917. The Baptists later moved from the building, which is now New Life of Waterbury Church.

David Greenleaf House (1763)

Greenleaf House

In 1761, David Greenleaf, a goldsmith, purchased land in Norwich on which he soon built a house, perhaps in 1763, the year he married Mary Johnson. David Greenleaf sold the house, located at 2 Town Street (near the Christopher Leffingwell House), in 1769 and moved to Boston. It was then the home of Jesse Williams until 1772, then of Capt. William Billings, whose widow sold it in 1796 to the cabinet maker Timothy Lester. His heirs sold the property in 1854. In recent years, the Society of the Founders of Norwich acquired the house and restored it.

Rev. John Rathbone House (1775)

Rev. John Rathbone House

Dating to 1775 (and probably later modified in the Federal style) is the home of Rev. John Rathbone (1729-1826) at 87 Water Street in Stonington. Rev. Rathbone was the first minister of the Baptist church in Stonington Borough, organized in 1775. According to the Brown Genealogy, Vol. II (1915), by Cyrus Henry Brown,

He was a Baptist, a patriot of the Revolution, member of the Stonington Committee of Correspondence and Inspection, and signer of the memorial to the Connecticut Assembly praying for cannon to protect the town of Stonington against the British attack on Long Point, in 1777. He organized the Baptist Church at Westford, Mass, in 1780, and became its first pastor, in 1781. He preached at Saratoga, NY, in his ninety-fifth year.

Ezekiel Kelsey House (1760)

Ezekiel Kelsey House

In a 1753 division of Wethersfield common land, Ezekiel Kelsey was granted a lot for his farm in what is now East Berlin. Ezekiel Kelsey built a house at what is now 429 Beckley Road around 1760, either for himself or for his son Asahel, to whom he gave the residence in 1768. Ezekiel Kelsey (1713-1795) also owned a share in a saw mill and was skilled as a cooper and a carpenter-joiner. He married Sarah Allis (1715–1798) in 1741. Ezekiel Kelsey’s brother, Enoch Kelsey, built a house that is also still in existence in Newington.