The Edwin McNeil House (1867)

The Edwin McNeil House, on North Street in Litchfield, is a good example of an older home which was transformed into a Colonial Revival edifice in keeping with the overall style of the neighborhood. The house was originally a vernacular home, built by Edwin McNeil in 1867. McNeil, a civil engineer who had served as a major in the Civil War, was instrumental in bringing the Shepaug Railroad to Litchfield in 1872. The railroad linked Litchfield to New York and spurred the town’s development as a summer resort. McNeil’s house became the Litchfield Inn in the early twentieth century and was transformed into a Colonial Revival estate after it was purchased by a wealthy Waterbury industrialist in 1911. It was renovated again in the 1990s.

The Stoner Mansion (1928)

The Stoner Mansion is a Tudor Revival house, on Stoner Drive, off Mountain Road in West Hartford. It was completed in 1928 for Louis Stoner, a manufacturer who became wealthy from the Jacobs Chuck company, which produces holding/clamping devices for stationary equipment and portable power tools. The family hosted famous parties at the mansion, which was situated on an extensive estate on a hillside with views of Hartford and a private golf course. Later, the family faced financial hardship and Louis Stoner committed suicide. In the 1950s, his widow, Clara Stoner, began to sell off lots of the property, with early houses being built down Stoner Drive, near Mountain Road. In the 1970s, homes were being built closer to the mansion itself. The Stoners eventually left the house and their furniture was put on auction in 1973. The mansion then had a number of other occupants: there’s a blog post by one former resident whose parents bought the house in 1974. In the 1980s, the house was owned by a man who was later arrested for tax evasion. Left empty for a decade by later owners who never moved in, the house deteriorated and had to be extensively restored by its most recent owners, one of whom owns an interior design company which, for a time, has been based in the mansion. The house will soon have new owners.

The Moses Loomis, Jr. House (1725)

The house of Moses Loomis, Jr. was built around 1725 on old Main Street in East Windsor Hill (now South Windsor). Moses Loomis, Jr., the son of Moses Loomis and Joanna Gibbs, was born in East Windsor Hill in 1696. His house in East Windsor Hill was built the year he married his first wife, Rebecca, in Harwinton. She died the following year and, in 1729, he married Elizabeth Bidwell. Moses and Elizabeth both died in 1761. He is buried in Edwards Cemetery in South Windsor

Oliver White Tavern (1743)

The Oliver White Tavern was built around 1741-1743 on East Street (now Brandy Street) in Bolton. Oliver White sold the house after it was built, although it continued to bear his name when it became a Tavern, between 1753 and 1764. During the Revolutionary War, Capt. Joel White owned the Tavern, which was situated near the farm where General Rochambeau’s French troops camped in June of 1781, during their march to the Battle of Yorktown. Some of Rochambeau’s officers stayed at the Tavern, while the general himself went to the Daniel White Tavern, nearby in Andover. The Oliver White Tavern continued in operation until around 1790.

Daniel White Tavern (1722)

Daniel White’s Tavern, on Hutchinson Road in Andover, was built as a house in 1722 and was opened as a tavern in 1773 by Daniel White, who was a Coventry selectman and an army captain during the Revolutionary War. Known as White’s Tavern at the Sign of the Black Horse, the house had two inner walls on the second floor which could be swung upwards to create an enlarged ballroom. The Tavern was a frequent stopping place for the comte de Rochambeau during the Revolutionary War. He stopped there in May 1781, on his way to and from his conference with Washington in Wethersfield. Later, in June of that year, when his army camped nearby in Bolton, on its way from Rhode Island to fight in the Battle of Yorktown (and again in November, when the army was returning), Rochambeau and several of his officers were guests at the Tavern. Rochambeau was there again in 1782, when he traveled to Newburgh, New York, for his final meeting with Washington.

Joseph N. Adams House (1842)

The Joseph N. Adams House is a Greek Revival home on Hayward Avenue in Colchester. The house was built around 1842 by Pomeroy Hall, one of several he built and sold in the vicinity, this house being purchased by William Mooney. It was next sold to the widow, Mrs. Lucinda Armstrong in 1847 (she later married Jared Hurlbut and moved to East Hartford); next to Nathaniel Hayward in 1857; and then to Joseph N. Adams in 1866. Adams was a shopkeeper, Justice of the Peace and secretary of the Colchester Savings Bank. The house remained in his family until 1939. Please Read my latest article on the architecture of Connecticut houses, which focuses on Early Twentieth Century Houses: Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival & American Foursquare!

Former Canton Baptist Church (1807)

In 1783, thirty members of the Presbyterian Church in West Simsbury (now Canton) separated to form a new church. Known as “separatists” or Strict Congregationalists, the new congregation split again just three years later, with about half of the members becoming Baptists. A Baptist church building was constructed in 1807 in Canton Village, on what is now Canton Green. In 1838, the church was moved to its present site, not far away on the Albany Turnpike, and remodeled in the Greek Revival style. The church had a bell founded in 1839 by George H. Holbrook of East Medway, Massachusetts. Later, in the twentieth century, the Canton Community Baptist Church moved to a new building on Dowd Avenue. The old church building is now used as offices.