The Phoenix Fire Insurance Company was founded in 1854. From 1873, the company was headquartered in a building on Pearl Street in Hartford designed by H.H. Richardson (and later torn down). In 1917, it moved to a newly completed building at 30 Trinity Street. The Georgian Revival building, designed by Morris & O’Connor, now houses the Connecticut Secretary of the State‘s office. This building is one of the sites featured in Tour 3 in my book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut.
The Hartford Electric Light Company began operations in 1883, led by its first president, Austin Cornelius Dunham. He had earlier pioneered the use of electricity for industrial lighting in 1878 by installing a six-lamp arc-light system in a building of the Willimantic Linen Company. The Hartford Electric Light Company established an office on Pearl Street in Hartford, which was later replaced by the current building at 266 Pearl Street. According to the Hartford Courant of April 14, 1913:
The new building to be erected on Pearl Street by the Hartford Electric Light Company and covering the site of the old office of the company and the vacant land immediately west of it, and extending north from Pearl street to the present Pearl street substation of the company, will have a frontage of substantially 131 feet, and a depth of 100 feet. It will be five stories high, with a basement.
It is to be constructed as a fireproof building of brick and steel throughout. The entire front, together with the east and west sides to a depth of twenty-nine feet, will be constructed of limestone up to the level of the second story. The rest of the structure will be of a soft grey brick, harmonizing with the limestone of the first floor.
On July 27, 1914, the Courant announced that the new building was ready and the company would move into its new quarters that day. The Hartford Electric Light Co. (HELCO) sold the building in 1960 (but continued to rent space in it for a number of years). In more recent years, the building, which has had an extra floor added on the roof, has been converted into condominiums. (more…)
The First Baptist Church of Bridgeport is a Richardsonian Romanesque structure located at 126 Washington Avenue. Built in 1893, it was the work of architect Joseph W. Northrop. According to Volume I of the History of Bridgeport and Vicinity (1917):
The first Baptist society was organized July 24, 1837, and was composed of six members, namely: Benjamin Wakeman, Raymond Whitney, Roswell Whitney, Bennett Whitney and two others not known. The church was constituted September 20, 1837, with thirty-nine members, eleven of whom were males and twenty-eight females. Rev. Joseph Eaton was the first regular pastor in 1838 and under him the membership increased to 136. Succeeding him the following have served as pastors of the First Baptist Church: Revs. Daniel Harwington, William Smith, William Reid, J. L. Hodge, A. McGregor Hopper, M. H. Pogson, W. V. Garner, C. C. Luther, G. W. Nicholson, and John Richard Brown.
Under Rev. J. L. Hodge a new church was constructed. In 1892 this structure was sold and a new location purchased at the corner of Washington and West avenues, where a stone church was erected and dedicated October 28, 1894. Rev. Dr. Samuel F. Smith, author of “America” participated in the ceremony. This church was incorporated in 1908.
Charles Bradley Cowles (1840-1914) was a businessman in Plantsville, Southington. The Italianate-style Charles B. Cowles House was built in 1873 and is located at 35 Church Street. The house‘s decorative bargeboards reflect the Gothic Revival style.
The Weldon Block is a commercial building at 901-907 Main Street in Manchester. Compared to its flat-roofed neighbors on Main Street, the Colonial Revival-style Weldon Block has a more residential design, featuring a hipped roof with dormer windows. Dr. Thomas Weldon (1861-1939) built the Weldon Block in 1898 after a fire destroyed his earlier (c. 1890) building in 1897. Dr. Weldon both had his office and resided (until 1915) in the building. The Weldon Block also housed Weldon Drug Company, which had been founded by Dr. Weldon’s father, Thomas Weldon, Sr. (1826-1910). The building remained in the family until 1937 and Weldon Drug continued in business for many years thereafter. The Weldon Block, which has been expanded several times over the years, has been home to a number of businesses, including Regal Men’s Shop from 1940 to 2000.
At 78 Atwoodville Road, in the Atwoodville (formerly East Mansfield) section of Mansfield, is a house built in 1778 by Arad Simons. Born in 1754, he married Bridget Arnold in 1775. Arad Simons was in the Connecticut Marine Service and was later a civil engineer. The house has had many owners over the years, including Elisha Fenton (1774-1864), a blacksmith, and his wife, Philata Storrs, whose family lived there in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Joseph Smith House, at 100 Ellsworth Street in Black Rock, Bridgeport, represents the transition from the Queen Anne style of architecture to the Colonial Revival style (note the Palladian window in the gable). The house was built in 1904 for Joseph Smith. Born in North Haven in 1851, he brought to Bridgeport by his parents in 1853. According to the History of Bridgeport and Vicinity, Vol. II (1917):
[He] was educated in the schools of Bridgeport and in Bryant & Stratton’s Business College. He made his initial step in the business world as a bookkeeper for the Wheeler & Howes Coal Company and later was with the Howes Sewing Machine Company for a short time. He afterward engaged in business with his brother Orland on Water street, selling fish, fruit and vegetables to the wholesale and retail trades. They built up the largest enterprise of the kind in the city at that time and the partnership was continued for a year or two, at the end of which period Joseph Smith purchased the interest of his brother Fairfield and entered into partnership with his brother Jeremiah in general merchandising at the dock in the Black Rock district, selling to crafts and boats. He continued in that line for some time and afterward spent two years with the David Trubee Butter Company, while subsequently he engaged in the butter business on his own account on Water street, where he conducted a wholesale store. He next turned his attention to the sale of wagons, having his establishment where the postoffice is located on John street. He there bought and sold wagons, building up a business of extensive proportions. At length he sold his place on the postoffice site to Gates & Omans and entered their employ in a place on the corner of Broad and John streets, where he continued for a number of years. He then opened business for himself in a carriage repository on John street, where he built up an extensive business in that line. At length he turned his attention to real estate dealing and not only bought and sold much property but also erected a number of residences and remodeled others, converting them into modern habitable dwellings.
Smith converted a number of earlier buildings in Black Rock into residences, including a former barn [no longer extant] on the Hackley Estate (which served as the Auxiliary Black Rock School, 1893-1905), which he moved to Hackley Street, the original Village Shop, the Hamilton House and the W.L. Burr Homestead, among others. The History of Black Rock (1955), compiled by Dr. Ivan O. Justinius, describes the Isaac W. Jones House, at 227 Ellsworth Street, as later becoming the Smith House and being passed to Smith’s daughter, Mrs. J. E. Hurlburt (her first name was Viola). 100 Ellsworth Street is also listed as the residence of Mrs. J. E. Hurlburt in a source from 1929.
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