The Unionville Bank and Trust Company was founded in 1922 and a neoclassical building was constructed on School Street in Unionville in 1929. The Bank went into bankruptcy in 1932 and the building has since been used for other purposes, serving as a branch of the Farmington Savings Bank in the 1950s and being converted to offices in the 1960s. (see “Unionville Historic District Study Report,” pdf, p. 35/70).
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Located across from the Public Library on Main Street in Durham, the Cook-Fowler House is a gambrel-roofed, central-chimney, “Cape Cod“-style cottage. It was built in 1772 by Jesse Cook, a carpenter, a year after his marriage to his third wife, Ann Griswold. Built by himself, the house was later given to Cook’s brother Thomas in 1790. It was later owned by the Lyman family and in 1860 became the home of William Chauncey Fowler, a professor, son-in-law of Noah Webster and author of a number of books, including Memorials of the Chaunceys (1858), The Sectional Controversy (1863) and History of Durham, Connecticut, from the first grant of land in 1662 to 1866 (1866). Two dormer windows were added to the house around 1850.
The Cowles-Smith House, at 536 Main Street in New Hartford, was built by Captain Henry Cowles in 1836. A blacksmith’s shop had once stood on the site, part of the grounds of a hotel, inherited by Henry Cowles from his father, Theodore Cowles. After experiencing financial reverses around 1840, Henry Cowles became proprietor of another hotel in Hartford, where he died in 1843. His widow and daughter then returned to New Hartford and occupied the old house until it was sold, in 1845, to John Cotton Smith. An entrepreneur, John C. Smith joined with his brother, Darius B. Smith, to establish the D.B. Smith & Sons cotton mill in Pine Meadow. He was also the agent of the Greenwoods Manufacturing Company. After his death in 1870, his widow continued to live in the house for many years. It is currently used for offices.
The Westover School is an independent preparatory day and boarding school for girls in Middlebury. Plans for the school’s quadrangle were completed in 1907 by Theodate Pope for Mary Hillard, Westover‘s first headmistress, who had sought to establish a school west and over the hill from Waterbury. The building was completed and opened in 1909. Designed in the Colonial Revival style, to harmonize with other structures around Middlebury Green, the Westover School building features a hexagonal cupola above the central entrance pavilion, with a Gothic chapel projecting on the east end of the structure and the cottage-like quarters of the headmistress on the west. In 1916, Theodate added Virginia House, an art and music studio, to the Westover campus.
The oldest brick house in the center of Litchfield is the Federal-style mansion built on East Street for Charles G. Bennett in 1814.
The Parmly House, in the Marina Park district of Bridgeport, was originally built in 1890 by Lavinia L. Parmly, a wealthy New York widow. She used it as a summer home and, upon her death in 1894, bequeathed it to her grandson, Parmly S. Clapp, as a wedding present. He later became a New York City stockbroker. The house was later purchased by Allen W. Paige, whose widow, Elizabeth, donated it to the University of Bridgeport in 1950. Named Cortright Hall, in honor of E. Everett Cortright, first president of the Junior College of Connecticut (now the University of Bridgeport). Used at first as administrative offices, Cortright Hall now houses the Department of Public Relations.
In the eighteenth century, two parishes were established in what was then the West Woods section of Farmington: the New Cambridge Ecclesiastical Society in 1742 and the West Britain Ecclesiastical Society, gathered in 1774 and incorporated in 1783. That same year, the West Britain Society dedicated their meeting house, constructed after several years of contention over where to build it. The two parishes of West Britain and New Cambridge joined in 1785 to form the new town of Bristol, but differences between the two parishes later led to the separation of West Britain as the town of Burlington in 1806. The first meeting house had been outgrown by then. According to Epaphroditus Peck, in a 1906 Address on the history of Burlington, “It is said that this little meeting-house was never finished inside, and that the swallows used to make their nests in the rafters and often fly in and out during service.” A new meeting house was built in 1809, near to the site of the first building which, according to Peck, “was removed to Bristol, and used as a cotton-mill. It afterward became the Ingraham clock-case shop, and was destroyed by fire in December, 1904.” The 1809 Congregational Church of Burlington was moved, reduced somewhat in size, and rebuilt in the Greek Revival style at its current location on the Burlington Green in 1836.
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