Derby United Methodist Church (1894)

The first Methodist Episcopal society in Derby was organized in 1793. In the early years, the members did not have their own building. According to The History of the Old Town of Derby (1880), “The ministers preached wherever they found open doors.” This included private homes, taverns and a schoolhouse. Again quoting from the History:

For a long time the society continued small and encountered much prejudice and some persecution. On one occasion, while a meeting was held in the house of Isaac Baldwin, which stood on the flat east of H. B. Beecher’s auger factory, the persecutors went up a ladder and stopped the top of the chimney in the time of preaching, so that the smoke drove the people out of the house. Squibs of powder were often thrown into the fire in time of worship, to the great annoyance of the people.

The Methodists constructed a church on Birmingham Green in 1837. This church continued in use until funds were raised at a tent revival in 1891 to build a new church. The current Derby United Methodist Church, built in the Romanesque style, was completed in 1894 on the site of the earlier church.

Cowell-Guilfoile Building (1908)

The Georgian-Revival style Cowell-Guilfoile Building is on the corner of Grand and Leavenworth Streets in Waterbury. It was built in 1908 and the architect was Joseph T. Smith. The building is named for two law partners who were involved in its construction: Francis P. Guilfoile, a lawyer, legislator and mayor of Waterbury, and Judge George H. Cowell of the Waterbury district court.

Sadd Memorial Library (1906)

The Library Journal, Vol. 31, No. 10 (October 1906), reported that:

The library recently built at a cost of $4000 by Mr. H. W. Sadd, of Wapping, Ct., as a memorial to the Sadd family, one of the first to settle in “Wapping parish,” a part of the town of South Windsor, was dedicated on Sept. 19. […] The library is built of blocks of cement, made in the cellar from sand dug from a hillside near by, is well lighted and spacious, heated by a furnace and well equipped for the needs of the neighborhood for years to come. The town of South Windsor voted in 1898 to establish and maintain a public library, which was kept in the basement of the Baptist church until lately, when it was moved to a room in the large new school-house. The Wapping Library is a very flourishing and successful branch, receiving books from the main library, which are changed every few months. A Chautauqua circle, which has existed for a long time, has been a most valuable and stimulating influence in creating a desire for a library.

In the 1960s, the Wapping Library collection was moved from the Sadd Memorial Library building to a shopping center storefront and consolidated with books from the Wood Memorial Library. These were moved in 1979 to the current South Windsor Public Library. The old Wapping library building now houses offices.

Charles E. Beach House (1900)

On Brightwood Lane in West Hartford is a Shingle-style house, built in 1900-1901. It was once part of the extensive agricultural estate of the Beach family, known as Vine Hill Farm. The farm was begun by Charles Mason Beach, who had earlier established with his two brothers the Hartford firm of Beach & Co., dealers in paints, aniline dyes and other chemicals. Beach settled in the area of South Main Street in West Hartford in 1859, purchasing a farm house. He began buying land for a dairy farm, which soon gained a reputation in the area for its high-quality milk, cream and butter. Beach’s son, Charles Edward Beach, managed Vine Hill Farm for many years and became a prominent citizen of West Hartford, serving on the town Board of Selectmen and being elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1907. In the 1860s, Charles E. Beach’s father had hired a German immigrant named Louis Stadtmueller, who planted the vines on the property which gave Vine Hill Farm its name. His son, Frank Stadtmueller, developed the farm’s process of producing infant milk formula that would keep for two to three weeks. Stadtmueller was later appointed Connecticut’s State Dairy Commissioner.

The house that Charles E. Beach built on Vine Hill Farm has an asymmetrical exterior covered with wood shingles, while the interior has rich architectural details. Parcels of Vine Hill Farm land began to be sold to developers in the 1920s, with the last piece of farmland being sold in 1948 by Charles Frederick Beach, grandson of Charles M. Beach. Smaller houses, built on the subdivided land, now surround the Beach House. The home’s original cobblestone port-cochere is now to the rear of the house, because the laying out of Brightwood Lane led to the entrance being shifted from South Main Street to the newer road.

36 Forest Street, Hartford (1895)

The Queen Anne house at 36 Forest Street in Hartford was built around 1895. It stands on the site once occupied by an earlier house that burned down in 1870. That house, rented for many years by the Rev. Nathaniel J. Burton and his wife, Rachel Pine Chase Burton, was one of the homes of the Nook Farm neighborhood, where Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe also lived. Rev. Burton settled in Hartford in 1857, when he became the pastor of the Fourth Congregational Church. In 1870, he succeeded Horace Bushnell as minister at Park Church, where he remained until his death in 1887. Burton’s son, Richard Burton, was literary critic of the Hartford Courant. He edited a posthumously published collection of his father’s Yale Lectures on Preaching, and Other Writings (1888), republished in 1896 as In Pulpit and Parish. Richard Burton, who was also a poet, later lived in the 1895 house on Forest Street.

12 West Main Street, Avon (1830)

Built around 1830 and thought to have served as offices and perhaps a warehouse for the Farmington Canal, the nineteenth-century commercial building at 12 West Main Street in Avon, adjacent to the Congregational Church, has since been a feed store, school, residence and, from 1947 to 1967, a post office. This former Farmington Canal Administration building continues today to house various businesses and living space.