The first Catholic church to be built in the North End of Bridgeport was St. Patrick’s Church. It began with a basement church designed by James Murphy of Providence, RI. The cornerstone for the Upper Church, designed by Dwyer and McMahon of Hartford, was laid in 1910 and the Dedication Mass for the completed edifice was offered in November of 1913 (see pdf, page 4). St. Patrick’s Parish merged with St. Augustine’s Parish in 2011 to form the new Cathedral Parish.
The building at 315 Main Street in Middletown was built in 1928 by the Middletown Savings Bank. Established in 1825, the bank was first located in Samuel Southmayd’s pharmacy on the corner of Main and William Streets. From 1838 to 1837, the bank was located in its own building, the Old Banking House Block at 319-323 Main Street, next door to the future site of their 1929 building. The bank then moved into a new building further south on Main Street and finally into their new Neoclassical structure at 315 Main Street. The Middletown Savings Bank became Liberty Bank in 1975.
The United States Post Office at 89 North Colony Street in Meriden, which has a dressed limestone facade embellished with classical ornamentation, is a notable example of Beaux Arts architecture. It was built by by James Knox Taylor, who was Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1897 to 1912. Also known as the Meriden Main Post Office, the building was designed in 1907 by and was constructed in 1909 as one of only twelve post offices built that year by the U.S. Government. An addition to the post office, designed under the supervision of James A. Wetmore, Acting Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury, was completed in 1932.
The house at 78 Pearl Street in Middletown was built between 1888 and 1892 (or c.1886) for James G. (or W.) Hubbard, a blacksmith. In 1911, the house was purchased by Charles Meader (d.1926).
The Greek Revival house at 13 West Mystic Avenue in Mystic was built in 1840 by the Chapman family. From 1956 to 1961, it was the home of Captain (later Admiral) James F. Calvert, who commanded the USS Skate, the third US nuclear submarine to be commissioned and the second submarine to reach the North Pole. Skate first went under the polar ice cap on August 11, 1958, but the thickness of the ice prevented it from surfacing. Skate later became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole on 17 March 1959.
In 1746, Sylvanus Freeman purchased a farm in the Wormwood Hill area of Mansfield and in 1752 he built a gambrel-roofed house on the property. Freeman sold the farm in 1764 and it passed through several other owners until 1817, when it was acquired by Selah Holley, a widow from Charlestown, Rhode Island, whose husband had passed away two years before. She lived in the homestead with her children, among whom was Perry Holley, who continued to reside in the house with his mother after his marriage in 1830 to Lois Fenton. As described in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties, Connecticut (1903), Perry Holley
was born July 2, 1809, in Rhode Island, and came to Mansfield when a boy. During his boyhood he worked upon the farm, and when still a young man learned the trade of forger, working at the manufacture of bits and augers in various localities where those goods were made; he was also one of the first operators of the trip hammer, being very expert in the handling of the clumsy machine, and consequently commanded good wages. In company with Hiram Parker he operated a forge shop near his house for a few years. After working at his trade for many years, he spent his declining years in Mansfield, farming, and died there in March, 1885. In religion he was a member of the Methodist Church at Gurleyville, and when a young man took a very active part in its affairs. Mr. Holly married Lois Fenton, a native of Mansfield, daughter of Elisha and Phileta (Storrs) Fenton, where her father was a blacksmith. Mrs. Holly died on April I8, 1892, aged eighty-four years, four months, to a day.
The Holley Homestead was sold out of the family in 1889 to Mary F. Sewall of Montclair, New Jersey, who used it as a summer home. One autumn, as she prepared to return to New Jersey for the winter, she asked a local carpenter to build an addition to the house. When she returned next summer, she was astonished to find that he had built what was essentially an entirely new house attached to the old gambrel-roofed colonial. The original house was later altered with the addition of a porch and gables. After 14 years of ownership, Sewell sold the house to Elizabeth Scheib Doty of Brooklyn, whose husband, Ethan Allen Doty (d. 1915), owned a large paper mill called Doty & Scrimgeour. The house, located at 627 Wormwood Hill Road, was next sold in 1931 to Stanley Kunitz, a well-known poet who worked on restoring the structure. It was again sold in 1935 to John Plimpton, who rented out rooms in the house. It is still owned by his heirs.
The Italianate-style house at 559 Old Main Street in Rocky Hill was built around 1850. It is also possible that the house was built much earlier and was then later adapted to the Italianate style. In the mid-nineteenth century, the house was owned by William Neff, a merchant who ran a wagon shop at Rocky Hill landing along the Connecticut River.
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