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

Joel Tuttle II House (1852)

Joel Tuttle II was a state senator probate judge. In 1852, he moved a smaller house to the west side of his property in Guilford to make way for his new Italianate house at 88 Broad Street. It was erected in 1852 by builder Baldwin C. Dudley. Tuttle married Lucy Sage of Cromwell. They had one son. After her husband’s death, Lucy Sage Tuttle lived in the house with her sister, Clara I. Sage. Outliving her sister and nephew, Clara Sage inherited the house. She donated an organ to the First Congregational Church of Guilford in 1908 in memory of her nephew, Willie Sage Tuttle. She also helped to establish the Guilford Free Library. After her death, the house was owned by Robert T. Spencer, who died in 1935. (more…)

Bela Davis House (1865)

The Bela Davis House at 31 Main Street (formerly 12 Main Street) in Durham has a Greek Revival central doorway and Greek Revival cornice returns on the gable ends. The house was built in 1865 by farmer Bela Davis (1800-1887) who had purchased seven acres from Zebulon Hale. He owned the house for ten years.

John Treadwell Norton House (1832)

Born in Farmington in 1795, John Treadwell Norton (d. 1869) became successful in the hardware business in Albany, New York. Treadwelll, who had been a surveyor and engineer for the Erie Canal, returned to Farnmington to construct a feeder canal that would supply water to the Farmington Canal from the Farmington River in Unionville. On land inherited in 1824 from his grandfather, he built a Georgian-style mansion at 11 Mountain Spring Road in Farmington in 1832, where he lived as a gentleman farmer. The house of his grandfather, John Treadwell (1745-1823), who served as Governor of Connecticut, had been a station on the Underground Railroad. John Treadwell Norton was also an abolitionist. He was one of the first people to visit the Amistad captives who were confined in a jail in New Haven. He played a major role in bringing the captives to Farmington, where they lived for 8 months before returning to Africa. The property was later owned by Austin Dunham Barney and was called the Barney House. For a time, the house was a used as a conference center and bed and breakfast by the University of Connecticut. In 2001, it was sold to its current owners, who have returned to calling the house its original name of Glenbrook.

Southern New England Telephone Company Building (1937)

The former Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building is an Art Deco skyscraper built in 1937-1938 at 227 Church Street in New Haven. Also known as The Eli (after its conversion to luxury apartments in 2004), it was designed by Roy W. Foote and Douglas Orr, who made extensive use of Stony Creek pink granite. When it was built, it was the city’s tallest building.

St. John of the Cross Roman Catholic Church (1914)

St. John of the Cross Roman Catholic Church, Middlebury

St. John of the Cross Parish in Middlebury began as a mission church of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Watertown and achieved parish status in 1916. The cornerstone of its stone church on Middlebury Green was blessed on October 4, 1907 and the church was dedicated on November 22, 1914.

Middlebury Town Hall (1936)

In 1935, a fire destroyed the Congregational Church and neighboring Town Hall (built in 1896 and remodeled in 1916) in Middlebury. They were rebuilt the following year, both to designs by the architect Elbert G. Richmond (1886-1965)

Huntley-Brown House (1795)

Gurdon Clark built the Huntley-Brown House on the Boston Post Road in Laysville in Old Lyme around 1795. Matthew Peck purchased the house in 1808 and sold it to William B. Tooker in 1827. Marvin Huntley, Jr. (1800–1886) bought the house a year later and it remained in the Huntley family for over a century. In 1959, architect Jane Carter and her daughter-in-law Sue McCloud Carter purchased the house and moved it to a lot near the Florence Griswold House. Mrs. John Crosby Brown, President of the Lyme Society, acquired the house in 1974 to serve as a home for the Society’s Director. It was later converted to administrative offices and is still on the grounds of the Florence Griswold Museum.