The Watson Coe House, built in 1867-1868 on Orange Street in New Haven, is a later example of the many Italianate style houses built in the city in the mid-nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, the house at 484 Orange Street was home to Wesley Roswell Coe, who was a Yale professor of Comparative Anatomy, marine biologist and Curator of Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum for sixteen years.
The Trumbull-Carew House (pdf), at 44 East Town Street in Norwich, was built in 1763 by Joseph Carew. Capt. Carew sold the house to Col. Joseph Trumbull in 1778 and later enlarged the Simon Huntington House nearby as his new residence. Col. Trumbull was the son of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull and was appointed as the first commissary general of the Continental Army in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. Illness forced him to resign his duties the following year and he died at his father’s home in Lebanon, having only recently purchased the house in Norwich. The house has had many owners over the years and has recently been for sale.
In 1688, Simon Huntington, Sr. granted an acre of land in Norwich to his son, Simon. According to Mary E. Perkins in Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895),
This is then recorded as the home-lot of Simon Huntington, Jun., who was born in Saybrook, 1659, and married in 1683, Lydia, daughter of John Gager of Norwich. Like his father, Simon, 2nd, played an important part in the history of the town, serving in many civil offices, and in 1696, succeeding Simon, Sr., in the office of deacon of the church, which he held until his death in 1736. In 1704, he calls himself Simon Huntington (cooper.) In 1706, he was granted liberty to keep “a house of public entertainment.” His house, occupying a central position, was honored as the magazine for the defensive weapons of the town, and as late as 1720, a report, made to the town, states that it contained a half barrel of powder, 3 pounds of bullets, and 400 flints.
The Huntington Tavern remained in the family until 1782, when it is sold to Thomas Carey, who then sells it to Joseph Carew, a merchant. Again quoting from Perkins,
Capt. Joseph Carew perhaps tears down the old Huntington house, and builds the one now standing on the lot [in 1782-83], but it is also possible that instead of entirely destroying the old homestead, for which, being of Huntington blood, (though not a descendant of Simon, 2nd), he might have had some attachment, he may have altered, or added to the old framework, but this, of course, at this late day, we have no means of knowing. He also purchases the rest of the Huntington land, facing on the Green, except one small piece of one rod frontage, which is sold to Gardner Carpenter. The long, low, rambling house has the appearance of being of much older date than 1783. It was occupied by Capt. Joseph Carew until his death, and then by his daughter, Eunice, and son-in-law, Joseph Huntington. […] It has been occupied until recently [1895] as the First Church parsonage.
While there was later enlargement, the earliest parts of the house date to around 1690 and it is considered to be one of Norwichtown‘s surviving seventeenth century houses.
Samuel Deming‘s father and uncle built the store he later ran in Farmington in 1809 which sold local goods and imported items. The store originally stood next to Deming’s house on Main Street, but was moved to Mill Lane in the 1930s, when a new town hall was built (now the site of a fire station). John Hooker, attorney and husband of women’s rights activist Isabella Beecher Hooker, rented an office on the store’s second floor in the 1840s. It was also on the second floor that the African men from the Amistad stayed during their first two months in Farmington in 1841. The space was then used as a school, where the Africans attended classes for five hours a day, six days a week. Today, Deming’s store is still a private commercial establishment called “Your Village Store.”
Built between 1984 and 1989, Bridgeport Center is an office complex of low-to-mid-rise buildings connected to form a single continuous structure. A highlight of Bridgeport Center, also known as the People’s Bank Building, is the 16-story office tower. The complex, located at 850 Main Street in Bridgeport and intended to revitalize the city’s downtown, was designed by Richard Meier.
Eliphalet Whittlesey (1679-1757) was born in Saybrook and later settled in the Newington section of Wethersfield, purchasing land from his older brother Jabez. Around 1709, he built a small one-story, two-room house at 20 Rod Highway, now 461 Maple Hill Avenue. His son, Eliphalet II, was born in 1714 and eventually left town with his wife and ten of his children in 1761. Eliphalet III later settled in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Another son, Lemuel Whittlesey, remained in Newington, constructing the current Whittlesey Homestead sometime between 1758 and 1772. The house was inherited by his son, Asaph, and then by Asaph’s daughter Delia, who married Homer Camp. Their son was Lemuel Whittlesey Camp. The house has had many owners over the years.
Colchester’s First Ecclesiastical Society was formed in 1706 and a meeting house built on Old Hebron Road. The second meeting house was built in 1714 and the third in 1771. Needing repairs, the third meeting house was pulled down and replaced with the current Congregational church, built in 1841-1842. The church was renovated with a Victorian interior and stained glass windows in 1885, but was remodeled to its current appearance in 1929. The church’s steeple, like a number of others in Connecticut, had to be replaced after the 1938 hurricane. A Baptist church was built on South Main Street in Colchester in 1835-1836. In 1949, the Colchester Federated Church was established, combining the First Congregational and Baptist Churches. The Congregational church was now the united place of worship and the old Baptist church building was sold.