The building which now houses the Middle Haddam Public Library was originally built as a store by Cyrus Bill and Daniel Tracy. Tracy was a master carpenter who also owned a shipyard. He soon left the partnership and was replaced by Seth Overton. The gambrel-roofed structure continued as a commercial establishment until 1825 and then became a residence. In 1908, it was donated by Delia Rounds to the library committee.
(more…)
Waterbury industrialist Elisha Leavenworth built a Greek Revival house facing the Green in 1845. He moved in with his new wife, Cynthia Fuller Leavenworth, who died in 1854 with her infant child. According to The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. II (1896):
[Leavenworth] entered into partnership with his father in the drug business, under the firm name of F. Leavenworth & Son. In 1850 he took Nathan Dikeman, Jr., of Northampton, as a partner, and the firm became Leavenworth & Dikeman, and so remained until its dissolution in 1890. […] Soon after the partnership with Mr. Dikeman was formed Mr. Leavenworth ceased to take an active part in the business, and devoted himself to his other interests. On his father’s death, in 1840, he succeeded him as postmaster, and held the office until 1849. He held the same position again, from 1853 to 1861. He represented the town in the legislatures of 1863, 1864, 1867, 1868. In 1875 he was elected judge of probate, and again in 1877 and 1878. He was for many years the acknowledged manager of the Democratic party in the town. He was the largest contributor to the Industrial School building, having given $10,000 for this purpose. Leavenworth hall was named by the managers in recognition of the gift. He was the first president of the Dime Savings bank.
Elisha Leavenworth, who never remarried, left his house, upon his death in 1911, to the Waterbury Girl’s Club. That year, a Masonic Temple, now part of the Mattatuck Museum, was built on the site of the house, which was moved nearby to 35 Park Place. The Girls Club is now known as Girls Inc.
Eustis Brush was an indentured servant who had acquired his freedom and settled in Newtown, building a house on Main Street around 1760.
The Naugatuck Savings Bank, a pressed buff brick and limestone building, was constructed in 1910 on Church Street in Naugatuck Center. The original south end of the building, with a grand entrance, was designed by the New York firm of Crowe, Lewis & Wickenhofer. The north end is an addition, built in 1934. The Bank was initially founded in 1870 as the Naugatuck Savings and Building Loan, formed to enable employees of the the Borough’s rubber-producing companies, Naugatuck Malleable Iron and other industries to build their own homes in town. Today, the building serves as the Bank‘s executive offices.
The Elijah Barber House, built in 1790, is at 227 Windsor Avenue in Windsor. Elijah Barber was a farmer who, like others at the time on Windsor Avenue, also made bricks. In 1798, John Warner Barber, the second of six children of Elijah and Mary Warner Barber, was born. He would take on additional farm work after his father’s death, in 1812, but was soon working as an apprentice to Abner Reed, an engraver in East Windsor Hill. Barber would become an artist and historian, writing Connecticut Historical Collections (1837), A History of the Amistad Captives (1840), Massachusetts Historical Collections (1848) and History and Antiquities of New Haven, Conn. (1856). The Barber House was later owned by the Wilson family for over a century. The house was converted into the Second French Empire style in 1878, with the addition of a new porch and mansard roof.
At the corner of Albany Avenue and Center Street in Hartford is a Second Empire-style house, built around 1875. The earliest documented owner was Terence McGovern. At the time of the First World War, he both lived and operated a saloon in the building, at a time when the surrounding Clay Hill neighborhood was heavily Irish. The house’s upper floors retain original decorative features, while the ground floor has been converted to commercial use. (more…)
The first St. Patrick’s Church, serving the Irish-Catholic population of Hartford, was dedicated on Church Street in 1851, but was destroyed by fire in 1874. It was replaced by the current quarry-faced brownstone church, completed in 1876. A fire in 1956 gutted the interior of the church, which was restored, but the steeple was removed during the reconstruction. In 1958, St. Anthony’s Parish, dedicated in 1898, merged with St. Patrick’s Parish. St. Anthony’s had served the Italian community of Front Street, a neighborhood that had been demolished for the construction of Constitution Plaza. In 1990, the Franciscan Friars took over the leadership for the ministries of St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church and established the Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry. In 2000, new facilities for the Center were constructed on the grounds of the church.
You must be logged in to post a comment.