The building which today serves as the Grange Hall in Coventry was built in 1834 by the Second Congregational Church of Coventry. Called the academy building, it was used as a chapel and a select school until it was sold to the Coventry Grange No. 75 in 1889. Formed in 1888, the Coventry Grange has used the building since 1890, making it the oldest continually used Grange Hall in the State of Connecticut. (more…)
The Hotel Bond reigned as Hartford’s grandest hotels in the 1920s and 1930s. It was built on Asylum Street in Hartford in two sections. The first section, a 6-story block, was completed in 1913, on the site of the former Popular Restaurant. In 1921, there was a grand reopening which unveiled the attached second section, a 12-story block with an elegant 5,000 sq.ft. Grand Ballroom on the top floor. There are many dramatic photographs of the Hotel Bond during the Flood of 1936. During World War II, the Hotel Bond was a hub for servicemen passing through Hartford. By the 1950s, the Bond faced competition from the Statler Hotel, opened in 1954, and the estate of founder Harry S. Bond went into bankruptcy. In 1965, the hotel building was sold to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which used it as the Saint Francis Hospital School of Nursing. The renovated Bond Ballroom reopened for receptions in 2001 and the rest of the building became a Homewood Suites by Hilton in 2006. (more…)
The Rockville Public Library began in 1893 with a $10,000 bequest from George Maxwell (1817-1891), President and Treasurer of the Hockanum Company woolen mills, and another $10,000 raised by the town of Vernon. The George Maxwell Memorial Library building, at 52 Union Street in Rockville, was opened in 1904. It was the first public building to be designed by architect Charles A. Platt. (more…)
In 1817, Hanford Davenport married Hannah, daughter of Col. Enoch St. John of New Canaan. Between 1819 and 1821, Davenport built a house in New Canaan on land owned by his father-in-law. The Federal-style house, perhaps built on the site of an earlier colonial-era house, is particularly notable for the high quality of its Adamesque interior carving, made by Deacon Hiram Crissey. The house, located at the corner of Oenoke Ridge and Lambert Road, was added to over the years up until the 1920s. It was later owned by Dr. N. W. Green and is sometimes called the Davenport-Green House.
The Charles H. Russell Block, 374-384 Atlantic Street in Bridgeport, is a four-unit block of row houses built in 1882. Based on circumstantial evidence, the building has been attributed to the architectural firm of Palliser, Palliser & Company. The block is part of a planned development of working-class housing, innovatively designed by the Pallisers on land owned by P.T. Barnum.
The First Congregational Church of Barkhamsted, also known as Barkhamsted Center Church, was gathered in 1781. The first meetinghouse was built in 1784 and was used until the current, second meeting house was built in 1844-1845. As written in Barkhamsted, Conn., and Its Centennial, 1879:
the old Meeting House was raised in 1784, and used for religious purposes until about 1843 or 1844, and also for town purposes. It was used but little, if any, after the new house was built, and being neglected, of course, rapidly fell into decay. After some changes in ownership, it eventually came into the possession of George Merrill and his sons, Charles and Sheldon, and was f1nally sold to the Greenwoods Company of New Hartford, and by them taken down in 1865, and part of it used in the buildings at the west end of the Greenwoods Company’s dam, near the Scythe Shop. The large stone steps at the east door were used by Bela Tiffany; those at the south door by Charles Merrill; those at the west door by Sheldon Merrill, as steps for their residences respectively.
The second meeting house’s belfry tower was removed in the 1920s, but was recently rebuilt.
In 1830, Officers’ Quarters and Barracks for enlisted men were constructed of stone at Fort Trumbull in New London. A wooden extension to the building, erected in the 1840s, was replaced by a new stone section in 2000. From 1910, Fort Trumbull was used as the training school of the Revenue Cutter Service and then as the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (the Coast Guard was formed in 1915 with the merger of the Life Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service). The barracks accommodated two cadets to a room and was later converted into the Academy’s library. After the Coast Guard Academy moved in 1932, the building was used primarily as offices.
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