Durfee Hall on Yale University’s Old Campus was built in 1870-1871. Designed by Russell Sturgis, it was Yale’s first dormitory built of stone. Constructed as a memorial for Bradford M. C. Durfee of Fall River, Mass., the building is now used to house first-year students of Morse College.
At the corner of Main and State Streets in Bridgeport is a bank building designed by Cass Gilbert and built in 1917. It was home to the Bridgeport Savings Bank, which was chartered in 1842 and merged with People’s Savings Bank in 1927. The bank’s first building was constructed at Main and State Streets in 1850, was replaced by a larger building in 1878 and then by the current building. People’s United Bank, as the company has been known since 2007, is now based in an office tower across the street. The 1917 bank building is now a restaurant. (more…)
Happy Thanksgiving! A classic example of a colonial house with few alterations is the Eliel Williams House, at 82 Elm Street in Rocky Hill, built in 1769. According to Vol. 3 of the Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography (1917), Corporal Eliel Williams was
born in Stepney Parish, January 30, 1746, died there August 2, 1819. He was one of the four corporals enrolled under Captain John Chester, and sent from Wethersfield on the Lexington Alarm and fought at Bunker Hill. He married Comfort Morton, a maternal descendant of Governor Thomas Welles, and her great-great-paternal grandmother, Honor Treat, was a sister of Governor Robert Treat, and wife of John Deming, one of the first settlers of Wethersfield.
The house is also known as the Merriam Williams House, after Eliel Williams’ son. According to the same source quoted above,
Merriam Williams, son of Corporal Eliel Williams, was born in Stepney Parish, July 3, 1785, and died May 10, 1857. He was a tanner and currier and shoe manufacturer of Rocky Hill, also a landowner and farmer. He married Elizabeth Danforth, daughter of Thomas Danforth, a manufacturer and merchant of Rocky Hill.
Now owned by the neighboring Middlesex Hospital, the brick Second Empire-style house at 49 Crescent Street in Middletown was built in 1873 by George R. Finley. From Clinton, Finley moved to Middletown in 1847 and became a prosperous merchant, owning a grocery store, a cigar store and a restaurant. His widow Rachael lived in the house after his death in 1885.
The former building of the Home Bank and Trust Company, at 16 Colony Street in Meriden, was built in 1922. Originally chartered as the Home Bank of West Meriden in 1854, the bank was first located in the Collins Block, which was later destroyed by fire (the Hall & Lewis Building occupies the site now). In 1863, the bank moved to its own building, at the corner of Colony and Church Streets. Abiram Chamberlin, president of the bank, who served as Governor of Connecticut from 1903 to 1905, lived on the second floor of the brick building. The 1863 building was moved around the corner to make way for the 1922 building, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White. The bank became Shawmut Home Bank in 1987 and the following year was acquired by Connecticut National Bank. Today, the former bank building is home to a nightclub. (more…)
The Colonial Revival-style house at 2345 North Avenue in Bridgeport was built in 1910. It was the home of Leonard Asheim, an architect who designed many prominent religious and municipal buildings in Bridgeport in the 1910s to 1940s, including Achavath Achim Synagogue and the Klein Memorial Auditorium. In front of the house stands a Franklin milestone, inscribed “20 miles to N.H.” It originally stood on the nearby training ground (now part of Clinton Park) and was reset by the D.A.R. in 1913 on the front lawn of 2345 North Avenue. (more…)
The church at 401 Hartford Turnpike in Vernon, now home to the Vernon United Methodist Church, was originally located in Bolton. As written in A Historical Sketch of Bolton, Connecticut (1920), by Samuel Morgan Alvord,
The Methodist Church began its work at an early date in Bolton with the first camp meeting ever held in a New England town. The noted itinerant preacher Lorenzo Dow was the leader and great crowds were attracted to his meetings which were held May 30 to June 3, 1805, near the Andover town line directly east of the South District School house. […] The first Methodist Church was built at Quarryville in 1834 near the present edifice. This building was sold to the Universalists in 1851 and moved some distance west and a new church was built the following year.
The Universalists moved the church nearer to Bolton Lake, where it remained until the 1860s, when the Methodist Church in Vernon began. As described in A Century of Vernon, Connecticut, 1808-1908 (1911):
The Vernon Methodist Episcopal Church started from small beginnings, as most of the Methodist churches do, from class meetings. This was in the early sixties. The meetings were held mostly in the Dobsonville schoolhouse and the increasing numbers demanded preachers and the society was supplied by students from Wesleyan University at Middletown. One of the men was Rev. W. W. Bowdish, who at present is district superintendent in the New York Evangelist conference. About 1865 the congregation had increased to such numbers that a house of worship became imperative and the church at Bolton was purchased and moved to Vernon, cut in two and lengthened and is the building now used for worship. Somewhat later the building was improved and a belfry added with a fine bell installed, mainly by the generosity of S. S. Talcott, a prosperous manufacturer, who for many years was the motive power of the society.
An addition to the church was completed in 1989. The church‘s current steeple is not the original.
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