Joseph Isham House (1765)

The house at 23 Hayward Avenue in Colchester was built in 1765 for Joseph Isham, Jr. after his marriage to Sarah, daughter of Dr. Oliver Bulkeley (who provided the land for building the house). Isham operated a store and served in the Commissary Department during the Revolutionary War. After his death in 1810, Sarah lived in the house until 1834. The gambrel-roofed building originally had a large center chimney, which was taken down around 1820 by Isham’s son, Ralph Isham, who replaced it with two smaller chimneys and used the extra stone to build the foundation of his new house, next door at 11 Hayward Avenue. From 1834 until his death in 1852, Benjamin Swan, Jr., lived in the house. Originally from Woodstock, Vermont, he had married Ralph’s daughter Ann and worked for the Hayward Rubber Company. Later owners substantially altered the colonial house, adding a tall central wall dormer projecting from the gambrel roof, a large cupola and a porch across the front of the house.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Shelton (1818)

Connecticut’s first Anglican parish was established in Stratford in 1707. Daniel Shelton, an Anglican who had settled in Stratford and later in Repton (later called Ripton and now Huntington, which was later incorporated into the city of Shelton) and been one those who had earlier petitioned for the Stratford parish, petitioned in 1722 for another parish to be established in Repton. Clergy from Stratford began making the trip to Repton to conduct Anglican services in private homes until the Repton parish was founded in 1740. A church building was soon constructed and survived until 1811. In that year, Sidney DeForest, seeking to rid the church’s belfry of pigeons by shooting them, ended up setting the church on fire with tow wadding from his musket. DeForest settled the claims for damages by giving some of his property as payment. The current St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was then built on the site of the earlier church. It was begun in 1812 and completed in 1818 and continued to stand next to what is now called Huntington Center Green. In 1870, a number of changes were made, in the Gothic style, to the interior of the church.

Pierpont Block (1893)

The Pierpont Block, on Howe Avenue in Shelton, is an impressively large Richardsonian Romanesque building, built in 1893. It was named for J. P. Morgan, one of the structure’s original investors. The Pierpont Block once contained Arcanum Hall, a hall for public gatherings, and also the public library, before it moved to a new building in 1894. The Pierpont Block was restored (pdf) in the early 1980s.

Stone-Otis House (1830)

The Town of Orange was incorporated in 1822 and soon new buildings began to be constructed in the vicinity of the new town’s Green. The Stone-Otis House was one such structure, built around 1830 for Dennis Stone. A prominent citizen, Stone owned the town’s second general store, located in his home. Around 1840, he added a large front display window to the house for the store. Stone and his family later moved to Kansas. The house, which is transitional between the Federal and Greek Revival styles, was sold Phoebe and Charles Otis, a tool and dye maker, in 1887. The family sold the house to the town in 1966. The restored house is now a museum and the headquarters of the Orange Historical Society.

Plumb Memorial Library (1894)

David Wells Plumb was a successful manufacturer in Birmingham (Derby) and Ansonia, who later settled in Shelton. In 1892, he led a committee of citizens which established a free public library, which opened the following year on the second floor of the Pierpont Block. D.W. Plumb then planned to erect a dedicated library building, but died before he could undertake the project or include funds for it in his will. His brother Horace, a Bridgeport businessman, decided to honor his brother’s wishes and financed the building of the library. Named the Plumb Memorial Library in honor of his brother, it was completed in 1894 on land donated by Plumb’s widow, Louise, next to their family home. The architect for the Richardsonian Romanesque structure was Charles T. Beardsley, Jr. of Bridgeport. A modern addition to the library was constructed in 1974.

Samuel C. Morgan House (1843)

Samuel C. Morgan (1789-1876) was born in Lisbon, graduated from Yale in 1812, trained as a lawyer and in 1815 began his practice in Jewett City. In 1842, he was elected president of the Quinebaug Bank and moved to Norwich. The Quinebaug Bank had been founded in 1832 and became the First National Bank in 1865. His house in Norwich, at 3 Crossway Street, was built around 1843. The house has interesting corner pilasters with H-shaped moldings.