Josiah Bronson House (1738)

The oldest surviving house in Middlebury was built by Josiah Bronson on Breakneck Hill Road in 1738. The house also served as a tavern and hosted a number of French officers during the Revolutionary War: first in 1781 when Rochambeau’s French army encamped in Middlebury from June 27 to July 1, on its way to the Siege of Yorktown, and again from October 26-28, 1782, during their return journey. One of the officers to stay in the tavern was the Baron de Viomenil, who was second in command to General Rochambeau during the Yorktown Campaign. At these times, Rochambeau himself most likely stayed with Captain Isaac Bronson, Josiah’s father, further down the hill. The Josiah Bronson House was acquired in 1940 by Lawrence M. and Esther Duryee, who restored it.

The Harriet M. Brainerd House (1886)

Edward M. Simpson, who lived in Middle Haddam at Knowles Landing, was a steamboat captain and pilot on the Connecticut River in the mid-nineteenth century. His daughter, Harriet M. Brainerd, was married to Edward R. Brainerd, a marble dealer in Chicago. The couple built a summer house near her father’s home in Middle Haddam in 1886. At the time, Knowles Landing was a destination for tourists and steamboats would dock at the landing. Harriet Brainerd built a Steamboat Dock House in the early 1890s to replace an earlier structure, built in the 1860s. Later used as a residence, this boat house burned down in the 1980s, but the Queen Anne-style Harriet M. Brainerd House (pdf) survives, displaying Victorian-era features, like the decorative stickwork on the front veranda. (more…)

Sun Tavern (1780)

Sun Tavern, on the Fairfield Green, was built about 1780, replacing an earlier Sun Tavern, burnt during the British raid of 1779. The Tavern was operated by Samuel Penfield, who acquired the property in 1761. George Washington stayed at the Tavern the night of October 16, 1789, during a presidential tour of New England. The building, which had an early ballroom on the third floor, remained a tavern until Penfield’s death in 1811, after which it passed through several owners as a private home. It was purchased by Robert Manuel Smith in 1885 and remained in the Smith family until 1977. The following year, it was acquired by the Town of Fairfield and was used as the Town Historian’s residence into the early 1990s. Still owned by the town, Sun Tavern has been recently restored and is now managed as a historic site by the Fairfield Museum and History Center.

Cyrus Beardslee House (1825)

The Cyrus Beardslee House, at 754 Monroe Turnpike in Monroe, is a brick Federal-style house built around 1823-1825 by Austin Lum, a brick mason, for Hall Beardslee, who deeded it to his son, Cyrus H. Beardslee, a lawyer who served in the state legislature for seven years, being Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1846. The house later became a boys’ school known as Gray’s Academy, operated by Dr. Robert Gray. In 1865, it was purchased by St. Peter’s Church Women to become the parsonage of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. After nearly ninety years, the house was sold to an antique’s dealer and then became the Rectory of St. Jude Roman Catholic Church. Today it is again a private home.

Scudder Building (1855)

The Scudder Building, on Main Street in Newtown, was built in 1855 to house the town clerk and probate offices. Also known as the Brick Building, it held the town library for a time, until the Beech Memorial Library opened around 1900 (which was, in turn, followed by the C.H. Booth Library in 1932. Lacking interior stairs, the building originally had an external staircase on the right to reach the second floor, where town meetings were held. Today, the Scudder Building is used as offices.

David Ogden House (1750)

David Ogden and his new wife, Jane Sturges Ogden, moved into a recently completed house in Fairfield in 1750. The house remained in the Ogden family for the next 125 years, surviving the burning of Fairfield by the British in 1779. The house later fell into bad repair, but in the 1930’s, it was restored by the architectural historian J. Frederick Kelly. Today, this saltbox colonial house is museum, operated by the Fairfield Museum and History Center and furnished according to information in David Ogden’s will and estate inventory. (There is more information in this pdf file)

Monroe Congregational Church (1847)

In 1762, residents of New Startford, now Monroe, successfully petitioned the State Legislature to establish a new parish. Previously, residents had made the long journey to Huntington (now Shelton) for worship. A meeting house, for use during the winter, had previously been built on Moose Hill Road. Once the New Stratford Ecclesiastical Society was formed, a new meeting house was built in 1766 on what is now Monroe Green. This was replaced by the current Monroe Congregational Church, built just to the north, in 1847. In 1985-1986, the church was expanded and the interior was restored as closely as possible to its nineteenth-century appearance.