Dr. Ernest A. Markham acquired a lot on Main Street in Durham in 1881 and by around 1885 his Victorian-style home was completed. Dr. Markham practiced medicince in an office in his home until his death in 1927. The house was owned by the Markham family until 1975.
Built by David Williams, a ship builder, in 1766-1767 (and later expanded), the house at 27 West Avenue in Essex was acquired by Abel Pratt in 1798. According to the 1884 History of Middlesex County,
The manufacture of combs in this country was first begun by Phineas Pratt and his son Abel, about the close of the last century. They were the first inventors of machinery for cutting the teeth upon combs, by which they could be produced so as to compete with English manufacturers. The shop in which they worked stood a few yards west of the site of Pratt’s blacksmith shop, and the first machinery was driven by wind power. Abel Pratt carried on the business during the first years of this century [the nineteenth].
In the later nineteenth century, it was owned by members of the Pratt family connected to the nearby Pratt Smithy, established in 1678 and handed down through ten generations.
David L. Aldrich and Edwin Milner operated woolen mills in the Plainfield village of Mossup. When Aldrich died in 1889, he left $3,000 towards the construction of a public library, with the condition that others raise a matching amount. His partner Milner pledged $2,000 and the rest was raised by the town residents. In 1893, the Aldrich Free Public Library Association was organized and the building was completed in 1895, with final construction costs paid by Milner so that the money raised by the town could be spent on books. The Aldrich Free Public Library opened on Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1896. The house-like Queen Anne-style building (pdf) was designed by Charles F. Wilcox of Providence, Rhode Island and was built by Willis Rouse, a local carpenter and a contractor and dealer in sash and architectural millwork in Central Village.
The bank building at 60 North Main Street in Waterbury was built for the Dime Savings Bank in 1927. The Dime Savings Bank was incorporated in 1870 and had previously been based in Victorian-era house. The bank’s new building was designed to reflect the architecture of the Spanish Renaissance by the New York the firm of York and Sawyer and features sculpted relief panels of allegorical figures and symbols of the Zodiac. The building, expanded in 1951, is currently available as commercial & office space.
When architect Philip Johnson designed his famous Glass House, he simultaneously planned an adjacent structure, known as the Brick House. Completed in 1949, a few months before its counterpart, the Brick House served as a guest house, as well as containing the support systems for both buildings. The Brick House was intended to contrast with its glass neighbor, being enclosed by solid walls, although skylights and porthole windows provide much natural light within. Johnson remodeled the interior with a narrow sky-lit corridor in 1953. The Glass House property has been open for tours since 2007, but recently visitors have not been able to enter the Brick House, which requires $3 million in repairs. (more…)
A particularly well-known and well-respected Connecticut modern house is the Philip Johnson Glass House. Designed by the architect Johnson and built on his 47-acre estate in New Canaan, the Glass House is considered a masterpiece in its use of floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass, set between black steel piers. The minimalist structure was planned in 1945 and finished in 1949. Johnson was inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe‘s 1945 design for the Farnsworth House, located in Plano, Illinois, the construction of which was not completed until 1951. While the wealthy Johnson retained a residence in New York City, he would often retreat to his New Canaan estate, where the Glass House was only the first of several structures he would build on the property. After 1960, Johnson lived in company with his longtime companion, David Whitney, an art critic and curator, who helped with landscaping the grounds and collecting art for the estate. In 1986, Johnson had donated the Glass House to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, retaining a life estate lease. Johnson and Whitney died in 2005 and in 2007, the Glass House was opened to the public for tours. While there is an endowment for the property, maintenance and restoration costs for the various buildings remains high. (more…)
The First Baptist Church in Stonington was organized in Stonington Borough in 1775. According to the History of the town of Stonington (1900), by Richard Anson Wheeler:
Its first meetinghouse was not built until the close of the Revolutionary war and was a substantial building, some forty feet square. […] The present house of worship was erected [in 1889] during the pastorate of the Rev. Albert G. Palmer, and is a magnificent building of modern architecture, and most admirably arranged. Owing to the want of a proper title to the site of its former meeting-house [built on Water Street in 1794 and replaced in 1835], and the questionable authority of using its funds in the purchase of the site of its present church [on Main Street], and in order to vest the property entirely in the church, independent of trustees or societies, the members of the church were in 1889 constituted and created by the Legislature of Connecticut a body politic and corporate by the name of the First Baptist Church of Stonington Borough, with full power to receive, hold and mortgage any and all, both real and personal, that may be given or descend to said church.
In 1950, the Baptist Church merged with the Second Congregational Church to form the United Church of Stonington. The old Baptist church was sold in 1957 to become a residence for architect Charles Fuller and wife Anne, who crated an art gallery in the building. The building has continued as a private residence.
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