Jabez Smith House (1793)

The Jabez Smith House in Groton has remained virtually unchanged since it was built in 1783. The original farmer on the property, in 1652, was Nehemiah Smith, who raised sheep and horses and grew flax and tobacco. His descendant, Nathan Smith, built the current house after the original house burned down. He then passed it on to his son, Jabez and two more generations of Smiths followed in the house. It was later used by Ann Graham Clarke of New York as a weekend retreat. She left it to the town in 1974 and, after her death in 1980, the house became a museum.

Saint John the Baptist Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church (1945)

In 1900, Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in Bridgeport formed the Greek Catholic St. John the Baptist Church and in 1907 purchased property for use as a church at 717 Arctic Street, near Hallet Street. Beginning in the 1920s, there was tension within the church and with the Catholic hierarchy in Rome over the issue of married priests. St. John’s defended married clergy and joined in the action of a Congress of Churches in Pittsburgh that severed all relations with the Roman Catholic Church. A new Orthodox church was thus created, called the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church. Back in Bridgeport, a group of Uniates, who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church, sued to gain control of St. John’s church property, which they reoccupied in 1944. This Greek, or Byzantine, Catholic St. John’s Church relocated to Trumbull in 1976. The Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic St. John’s Church, now denied the property on Arctic Street, constructed a new church in 1944-1946 at 364 Mill Hill Avenue in Bridgeport. The church successfully defended against another Catholic civil suit to obtain this new property in 1947. The interior was expanded and renovated in 1956-1959.

City Savings Bank of Bridgeport (1914)

The City Savings Bank of Bridgeport was incorporated in 1859. As explained in Samuel Orcutt’s A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport (1886):

About the beginning of the year 1884 it was felt by the trustees that the rooms on Wall street which had hitherto been rented for banking purposes, though twice enlarged, had become entirely inadequate, and that the City Savings Bank should possess a permanent home of its own. After careful deliberation it was decided to purchase one-half the lot of the Bridgeport National Bank, on the corner of Main and Bank streets, and that both institutions should unite in erecting a structure to be known as the United Bank building, of Bridgeport.

The 1885 United Bank Building was torn down in 1912 and replaced by a new Classical Revival-style City Savings Bank building, completed in 1914. Both structures had been designed by architect Warren R. Briggs.

Eliphalet Walker House (1855)

The Walker House, at 250 Ellsworth Street, in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, dates to around 1855. It is said to have been built by Oliver Walker, a partner in the Walker-Rew Shipyard, but is named for Eliphalet Walker, also a shipyard owner. The house, which is Black Rock’s most striking Italianate-style home, was extensively renovated seven years ago, when the rear third of the house was removed and completely rebuilt.

Seaside Institute (1887)

The Seaside Institute is a Richardsonian Romanesque building, erected in 1887 at the corner of Lafayette and Atlantic Avenues in Bridgeport. Designed by Warren R. Briggs, it was built by the brothers, Drs. I. D. Warner and Lucien C. Warner, across Atlantic Street from their corset factory. With seven eighths of their 1,200 employees being women, the Seaside Institute was built to provide the female workers with various amenities. As described in Volume II of Rev. Samuel Orcutt’s A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport (1886),

It comprises a Restaurant, Free Reading Room, Library, Bath Rooms, a large Public Hall, and Rooms for Evening Classes. It is a very elegant and substantial building of granite, brownstone and pressed brick, costing $60,000

The Seaside Institute‘s dedication ceremony was attended by Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland. Much lauded at the time for its role in remedying what was called “the problem of the working-girl,” the Institute continued to serve its original purpose until changing times led to its dissolution in 1929. The building was next owned by the Bridgeport Herald and, since 2007, has been home to Bridgeport International Academy, a private high school. (more…)