Water Tower and Forge, Avon Old Farms School (1922)

Avon Old Farms School, which opened in 1927, is a boarding school for boys founded by Theodate Pope Riddle, Connecticut’s first licensed female architect. She lived at Hill-Stead in Farmington, which she had helped design. Planning for the school’s campus began in 1918 and the land was cleared in 1921. The buildings were modeled after English Cotswold and Tudor styles and utilized traditional English methods. Among the earliest structures to be built were the Water Tower and the Forge, located at the entrance to the campus, whose foundations were laid in 1922. The cylindrical Water Tower is constructed of red sandstone at the base, which melds into similarly-colored brick. Connected to it is the Forge, which has two large chimneys. Constructed of sandstone blocks and brick, it was built as a working forge and provided the metal hardware (hinges, door latches, stair rails, and lanterns) used throughout the campus. The Water Tower contained water until 1976, when cisterns were placed underground. It is now the Ordway Gallery. The Forge was later converted to classroom and meeting space and its exterior has recently been restored.

995 Prospect Avenue, West Hartford (1916)

The house at 995 Prospect Avenue in West Hartford, across from the Governor’s Residence, was built in 1916 for Lewis E. Gordon, resident manager of the American Mutual Liability Insurance Company. From 1926 to 1989, the house was owned by Miss Ethel Frances Donaghue (pdf) (1896-1989). Her father, Patrick Donaghue, an Irish immigrant, became wealthy running a wholesale and retail liquor business and purchasing commercial real estate in downtown Hartford. A wealthy heiress, Ethel Donaghue earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an SJD from New York University School of Law. Specializing in real estate and trust law in Hartford, she practiced until 1933, when her mother was ill with cancer. Her father had passed away when she was in High School from heart disease.

Experiencing health problems of her own in her later years, Ethel Donaghue left the bulk of her wealth ($53 million) to the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation to “promote medical knowledge which will be of practical benefit to the preservation, maintenance and improvement of human life.” After Donaghue was incapacitated by a series of strokes in 1980, there was a legal battle over control of her financial affairs between the two conservators of her estate, who were both later removed (pdf). The resulting scandal led to the resignation, in 1984, of Probate Judge James H. Kinsella, to avoid an impending impeachment vote in the Connecticut House of Representatives. The house on Prospect Avenue, vacant for a number of years after her death, passed through other owners. In 2011, the house was sold to George Jepsen, who is currently serving as the state’s Attorney General.

Church of the Holy Trinity, Middletown (1874)

The Church of the Holy Trinity in Middletown is an Episcopal church, built of local brownstone and designed in the Gothic Revival style by Henry Dudley. The first Anglican services in Middletown were conducted around 1730 and a parish, called Christ Church, was formally organized in 1750. The first church building was built in 1755 on South Green, followed by the second on Broad Street (now used as Russell Library) in 1834. Martha Mortimer Starr (1777-1848) bequeathed her land on Main Street to the parish on condition that it be renamed Church of the Holy Trinity. The name was changed in 1857 and the current church was built in 1870-1874 at 381 Main Street. Among the rectors of the church was Dr. Edward Campion Acheson, who served from 1892 to 1915 and was later bishop of Connecticut. His son, Dean Acheson, later served as Secretary of State in the administration of Harry S. Truman.

Hotchkiss Block (1894)

The Hotchkiss Block is a late-nineteenth-century commercial/residential building at 598-614 Main Street in Middletown. A large structure, it has Renaissance Revival elements and its impressive roof cornice, bay windows and first floor cornice are clad in pressed metal. The building is named for Frederick Hotchkiss, who built it c. 1894 and whose family owned it until 1919. It was then owned by Israel Mittleman, whose ground-floor clothing store had been in the building since 1910.

Middletown Alms House (1814)

The building at 53 Warwick Street in Middletown was built in 1814 to house the town’s poor. The Alms House was used as a poorhouse until the Town Farm opened on Silver Street in 1853. A number of businesses and organizations have since used the building, starting with the Hubbard and Curtis Hardware Company, and later including the Middletown Fire Arms and Specialty Company, the Middletown Rifle Club and the C.B. Stone Oil Company. The building once had a classical cupola on the roof and a central pavilion with a projecting gable roof (both were later removed, but the pavilion has been restored). It is now owned by by Lee Godburn, who has a hair salon in the building.

Rev. Joseph Graves House (1775)

On Miner Street, in the Westfield section of Middletown, across from the Third Congregational Church, is a house built sometime between 1775 and 1800, by Rev. Joseph Graves, first pastor of the Westfield Baptist Church. Rev. Graves was a descendent of Deacon John Graves, whose 1685 house is located in Madison. The house passed to Joseph Graves’s son, Josiah Graves, who also succeeded his father as Baptist minister. The house was in the family until 1884. It has matching additions on either side of the front facade.

Samuel T. Camp House (1865)

The Italianate-style house at 180 College Street in Middletown was built in 1865-1866 by Jeremiah Hubbard and sold, shortly thereafter, to Samuel Talcott Camp. In 1858, Camp had started a grocery business on Main Street with B.F. Chaffee. Camp was president of the Farmers & Mechanics Savings Bank, He was also a Trustee of Wesleyan University from 1880 to 1903. In 1905, the Board of Trustees established the Camp Prize in his memory, awarded for excellence in English Literature. After his death, his widow, Martha E. Smith Camp, remained in the house until her own death in 1924. The house was then acquired by Frank A. Smith, who added stucco to the exterior. (more…)