Displaying a date of 1876, the Morse Block is an office and commercial building on Main Street in Thomaston. The building seems to have replaced an earlier Morse Block (where clockmaker Seth Thomas had had a store) that was destroyed in a fire.
The Old Stone Schoolhouse (pdf) is located at 155 Nichols Road in Wolcott. An extension was added to the building in 1898, which was attached to a frame woodshed (built in 1882) to form a new wing. At the time the addition was made, the date 1825 was inscribed in the school’s front gable, although the oldest part of the building may date back to 1821. In either case, the building is recognized as the oldest stone schoolhouse in Connecticut. Built as the town’s Southwest District school, it was in continuous use until 1930, when a new school was built. It was then purchased by Emily Morris of New Haven, whose grandfather, Lucius Tuttle, had taught at the school in 1829. In 1937, she gave it to the Mattatuck Historical Society of Waterbury and in 1963 it was purchased by the Wolcott Historical Society and is used as a museum of the town’s history.
Torrington Savings Bank was established in 1868 and for many years was located in the Granite Block, which once stood on Main Street. Their current building, at 129 Main Street, was built in 1938. It was designed by Torrington architect Carl Victor Johnson, who also designed the Torrington City Hall (1936) across the street.
The Black Rock section of Bridgeport was first occupied by the Wheeler family in 1644 and developed as a trading settlement. Its oldest surviving house is the John Wheeler House at 268 Brewster Street. Although traditionally dated to 1720, the steep pitch of its roof and various interior features suggest an even earlier date in the seventeenth century (c. 1680). John Wheeler was a wealthy merchant who represented Fairfield in the colonial legislature. The house was greatly altered over time: a Gothic Revival center gable with a quatrefoil window was added in the 1850s, the original central chimney was removed above the first floor and the front facade was greatly altered in the 1940s. These later alterations were removed in the 1980s when the house was restored to an early colonial appearance.
Established in 1807, Hartford‘s Old North Cemetery (pdf) contains the graves of such notables as Frederick Law Olmsted (Sr. and Jr.), Daniel Wadsworth, Horace Bushnell, Dr. Mason Cogswell (father of Alice Cogswell) and Mary Beecher Perkins (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and grandmother of Charlotte Perkins Gilman). It is also the final resting place of African-American soldiers of the 29th Colored Volunteer Regiment from the Civil War. The long-neglected cemetery is in a bad state of repair, but is now undergoing renovation. The cemetery has a Queen Anne-style brick office building, which resembles a tiny Victorian house. (more…)
In 1914, Father Francis P. Nolan built a house in the Blue Hills section of Hartford. In 1924, he was named founding pastor of St. Justin Parish. Fr. Nolan, who had a degree from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School and had worked as a civil engineer, was much involved in planning the new church with architects Whiton & McMahon. Built in 1931-1933, the church is an Art Deco structure and has Art Deco ornamentation in the interior as well. (more…)
The Belden is a Colonial Revival/Neoclassical Revival apartment building at 1545-1555 Main Street in Hartford’s Clay/Arsenal neighborhood. designed by the firm of Bayley & Goodrich and built in 1898, it occupies a prominent position at the corner of Main and Belden Streets. A fire destroyed part of the north section of the building, but it was restored and partially rebuilt in 1983.
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