The building at 25 Lyme Street in Old Lyme was built in 1867 as the J. A. Rowland Hardware Store, which occupied it until 1948, when it was sold to Smith’s Hardware. In 1975, antiques dealer Richard T. French bought the building, which soon became the Country Duffer clothing store. The building has been home to The Cooley Gallery since 1988.
I’m announcing the return of this site’s companion blog, Historic Buildings of Massachusetts! The site has been offline for about a year and hadn’t been updated since the end of 2017, but I have some new material that I’ll be adding from Concord and Sheffield, and a great deal from Gloucester, like the brick hotel, pictured above, which dates to 1810. I’ve also recently posted a library and a church, both in Great Barrington. In addition, I’ve been working on indexes of buildings by street address for each town (like the ones I have for this site), and I have so far completed most of them. Please check out that site (and this one, of course!) for new posts!
The similarly designed houses at 69 and 75 Olmsted Street in East Hartford were both built as rental properties about 1890 by Herbert S. Keeney, who probably did not himself reside in town. He later sold the house at #69 to Louise K. Seymour and owned #75 (pictured above) until the 1920s.
As related in Houses of Essex, Vol. I, by Donald Malcarne (2004, Ivoryton Library Association), page 86, the house at 1 Main Street in Ivoryton (on the edge of Centerbrook) in Essex was built circa 1826 on land acquired in that year by Ezra Parker, just east of where his brother, Daniel Parker, had also purchased land for a homestead in the same year. The land had been part of the holdings of the Williams family, descendants of Charles Williams, the first iron maker in Potapoug Quarter (part of which would become the Town of Essex). Ezra Parker sold the house in 1843 and moved to Michigan. The house later returned to the Parker family when Chauncey Spencer, Jr., married to Ezra’s niece Temperance, bought it in 1864. It then remained in the family until 1910. The current front entrance portico and larger chimney are alterations made since the mid-1950s.
Wallace Barnes began manufacturing springs for clocks in Bristol in 1857. His grandsons, Fuller and Henry Barnes, developed the business into the Associated Spring Corporation, created by a merger of three companies in 1922. They also acquired other companies, including the spring-making firm of Dunbar Brothers. Fuller Barnes (1887-1955) served as president and his brother, Henry Clarke Barnes (1889-1966), was secretary-treasurer. In 1920, Fuller acquired a large property in Bristol where he and his brother would erect their mansions. Fuller built the Colonial Revival house called Copper Ledges in 1924 and Henry built the 32-room Tudor-style residence called Chimney Crest in 1930-1931. Located at 5 Founders Drive in Bristol, the house was designed by Perry & Bishop of New Britain. It was home to Henry and his wife, Lilian Houbertz Barnes (1891-1986) until they moved to Green Acre Farms on Perkins Street in Bristol. In the 1960s the Barnes mansions were used by Laurel Crest Academy, a prep school for boys, and more recently
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In 1840, Capt. Titus Case (1769-1845) erected the house at 144 Cherry Brook Road in Canton. This had previously been the location of the home of Sgt. Daniel Case II, who’d arrived in the 1740s and built the first gristmill in town. Calvin Case also operated a mill, located west of the house, that had a 50-foot water wheel. His descendants used the house as a summer home. A historical case in the Canton Center Congregational Church was given in memory of his daughter, Kate Minerva Marsh (1836-1888). A later owner was Jeremiah Crowley, who made butter in the nearby creamery. The house’s cupola was added after the Civil War.
Like Meeker’s Hardware in Danbury, which I featured on this site a few days ago, W. H. Morrison in Torrington was another hardware store that closed in the early twenty-first century after being in business for over a century. The Italianate commercial building at 63 Water Street was erected in 1896 by William H. Morrison to house his plumbing and hardware business. The store finally closed in 2010 after 114 years. The Southern New England Telephone Company rented offices on the second floor until 1930.
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