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

William H. Perry House (1857)

William Hunt Perry (1820-1899) was secretary and treasurer of the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, which produced sewing machines. He was also president of Bridgeport’s parks commission and his will left money for the erection of the Perry Memorial Arch, which serves as a gateway to Seaside Park. William H. Parry’s 1857 Italianate house is at 335 Noble Avenue in East Bridgeport, where he was one of the initial property owners with P.T. Barnum. The two men gave to the city the land for Washington Park.

Charles B. Andrus House (1915)

At 47 Vine Street in Hartford is a house built in 1915. An elaborately decorated variation on a basic American foursquare design, it was most likely designed and constructed by its first owner, Charles B. Andrus (although there is a Charles B. Andrus buried in Manchester who died in 1910), who was a local builder.

Harris B. Humason House (1885)

The house at 201 Vine Street in New Britain originally stood on Lexington Street, across from the New Britain Museum of American Art. It was built around 1885 for Edward N. Stanley (1858-1948), president of the Savings Bank of New Britain and a director of The Stanley Works. About 1900, the house was purchased by Harris Burrill Humason (1862-1918), secretary at The Stanley Works, who had previously been renting it. He moved the house to Vine Street and added the porches. Also, please check out my recent posts on my visits to Olana (home of Frederic Edwin Church, who was born in Hartford and is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery), Cedar Grove (home of Thomas Cole) and Hudson, NY.

Horace Webster House (1837)

The Horace Webster Farmhouse (pdf), at 577 South End Road in Southington, is a Greek Revival house built in 1837. It was constructed on land that Webster had purchased in 1835. He moved an earlier house on the site to the rear to become a barn. Thought to have been one of the oldest houses in Southington, it burned down in 1975. Webster, who was a descendent of seventeenth-century governor John Webster, moved to Fair Haven in New Haven in about 1863. His sons continued to operate the property as a cattle farm until 1917. In the 1920s, the farm property became a golf course, now the Southington Country Club.

Mechanics Savings Bank, Winsted (1929)

The Mechanics Savings Bank of Winsted was established in 1875. A new Beaux Arts/Neo-Classical Revival building (pdf), designed by the firm Hoggson Brothers of New York, was constructed for the bank at 86 Main Street in 1929. The bank became Northwest Bank for Savings in 1979 and Northwest Community Bank in 1996.

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Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church (1846)

The congregation of Pleasant Valley Methodist Church formed in 1838 and met in members’ homes until the church was built in 1846-1848. A Greek Revival building, it is located on Route 181 in Pleasant Valley, Barkhamsted. Additions to the church were built in 1899 and 1992.

Ephraim Kirby House (1773)

The house at 113 South Street in Litchfield was completed around 1773 for Ephraim Kirby (it is also known as the Reynolds Marvin-Ephraim Kirby House). A veteran of the Revolutionary War, Ephraim Kirby became an attorney and in 1789 compiled the first volume of state law reports in the country. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Kirby as the first Superior Court Judge of the Mississippi Territory. Kirby traveled to Fort Stoddert, in what is now Alabama, and died a few months later. His grandson was Edmund Kirby Smith, the Confederate general. The Kirby House was completely transformed in the early twentieth century with numerous Colonial Revival alterations.