New Hartford House (1888)

Sadly, this building was so badly damaged by a fire in the early hours of August 10, 2021, that it had to be demolished the next day.

I’m presenting the New Hartford House Hotel (in New Hartford) in this post, although I still have some questions about the history of this building. If anyone has further details, please contribute to the comments! It was built in 1888 (according to this post). A former hotel (it was once painted pink in the 1970s!), it now contains a restaurant and shops on the first floor with apartments above. There was an earlier tavern at the same location that was replaced by the current building. In 1846, Elias Howe was living in this earlier New Hartford House and using the basement as a mechanic’s shop. On September 10, 1846, Howe became the first person to be awarded a patent for a sewing machine using a lock-stitch design. A Handbook of New England (1916), by Porter E. Sargent, states that “In Howe’s shop, on the site of the New Hartford House, woman first sewed a stitch on a sewing-machine.”

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Riverton General Store (1889)

The Riverton General Store in Barkhamsted was built in 1889 and was originally owned and operated by the Hart Brothers. Charles Rowley bought the store in 1899 and passed it to his son, Alcott, in 1907. Both men were village postmasters in Riverton and the store was at the center of the village‘s social life. The hall above was once the meeting place of such groups as the Barkhamsted Chamber of Commerce and the Riverton Grange #169, which was founded there in 1908. The wing, now attached to the right of the original 1889 Italianate-style main block, was originally a separate building (built c. 1885). It was attached to the store in 1910. Later owners of the store (through 1934) were A. L. Lewis and Ernest G. Jordan. The store is still in business today.

Wilcox-Meech House (1872)

An Italianate double house at 55 Crescent Street in Middletown, the Wilcox-Meech House was built between 1867 and 1872 (or between 1880 and 1890) by John Wilcox, Middletown’s Chief of Police. George Thomas Meech purchased the property in 1881 and lived there into the 1930s. George T. Meech had served in the Civil War and later was a partner with Orrin E. Stoddard in the Meech & Stoddard grain and feed store. The house was owned by the Hubbard family (and became known as the Hubbard Estate) from 1937 to 1973, when it was acquired by Middlesex Memorial Hospital. It is now used by the hospital as offices.

Parker Homestead (1777)

At 640 Wormwood Hill Road in Mansfield is a house originally built by Capt. Richard Fletcher (1736-1812) and sold, in 1777, to Zachariah Parker, Jr., who farmed on the property. The house would remain in the Parker family until 1901. Zachariah passed it to his eldest son, Thomas Parker, who had five sons and one daughter with his wife, Hannah Atwood Parker. The elder brothers, Miner and Pliny, married, but the three younger brothers did not. Their sister, Hannah Parker (1804-1895), kept house for her brothers at the Parker Homestead, where she lived until her death. Hannah Parker also taught school at Wormwood Hill and professed to be the first female teacher in Mansfield. Her nieces and nephews inherited the house and sold it in 1901 to Gertrude Cantor of New York. She and her sister, Alice Cantor, ran the property as a summer boarding house. To make more room for their many guests, the sisters raised the house from its original one-and-a-half stories to a full two stories. (more…)

St. Anthony Church, Ansonia (1915)

Lithuanians in Ansonia sought to establish an ethnic parish when they incorporated a lodge of the Lithuanian Society of St. Anthony in 1907. Bishop John J. Nilan of the Diocese of Hartford rebuffed their request, insisting that the Lithuanians remain within Assumption parish. The Lithuanians began to build a church in 1912 without episcopal approval, hoping that the bishop would reverse his decision, but he maintained his previous position. In 1915, an appeal directly to Rome succeeded and St. Anthony parish was given sanction by the Pope to operate as an independent parish. St. Anthony’s Church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1915 by Father Matthew Pankus of Bridgeport.

Update: In 2015, the church celebrated its 100th anniversary and then closed.

Oliver Boardman House (1785)

The house at 168 North Street in Litchfield is described in Historic Litchfield, 1721-1907 (1907), by Alice T. Bulkeley, as follows:

Retracing our steps down North street toward the center, the next house of historical interest is the Lord house, built in 1785 by Oliver Boardman on Glebe Land. The east side of North street, from the corner of East street to the Lord house, was owned by the church and called Glebe Land.

The land on which the house was built was either leased by or sold to Boardman by the church authorities, and bought of him by Sylvester Spencer, Litchfield’s former real estate dealer. It was also owned by Samuel Beach, who sold it to George Lord, the brother of Augustus, who with his sister resided there until his death at the age of eighty-seven. His sister, Miss Lord, occupied the home until her death in the Spring of 1907 at the age of 80 years and 11 months, when the house descended to her nieces. The side doorstep, an immense block of stone, was brought from Salisbury, requiring twelve pair of oxen to draw it.