Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Ebenezer Avery House (1750)

The Ebenezer Avery House, built around 1750, originally stood at the corner of Latham Street and Thames Street in Groton. On September 6, 1781, American soldiers, including Ebenezer Avery, who had been wounded at the Battle of Groton Heights, were being transported in a cart to become British prisoners. The rolling cart went out-of-control and collided with a tree. The wounded, in agony, were taken to the Ebenezer Avery House. The Averys were a prominent family of early settlers in Groton. Captain James Avery was the first of the family to settle in Groton in the seventeenth century. His son, also named James, occupied a house, built in 1671, known as the Hive of the Averys, which burned down in 1894. The Avery Memorial Association was formed the following year and erected a memorial at the site of the Hive. In 1971, Stanton Avery of California purchased the Ebenezer Avery House and donated it to the Association. The house was moved from its original location to the the grounds of Fort Griswold State Park, where today it is open to the public as a house museum.

The deKoven House (1791)

Captain Benjamin Williams built an impressive brick house in Middletown in 1791. As described in New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial, Vol III (1913), compiled by William Richard Cutter,

Benjamin Williams came to America from the Island of Bermuda when a young man, and settled in Middletown, Connecticut, where he died June 15. 1812, at the age of forty-five years. He built and lived in the house on East Washington street subsequently known as the De Koven place, and at present as the Wadsworth House, He became a large ship owner and had many vessels plying between the East and West Indies and the port of Middletown, the towns on the Connecticut river having extensive shipping interests in those days. Then came the war of 1812, and French privateers captured the greater number of his ships. He expected that the government would reimburse him for this loss, and died in the hope that his widow would receive what was her due, but this was never done.

The house was later owned by Henry L. deKoven, who was also involved in merchant shipping and was the first president of the Middlesex County Bank in 1830. In 1900. the house passed to Clarence Seymour Wadsworth, who used it as a business office after he built the Mansion on his Long Hill Estate. In 1941, he bequeathed the house to the Rockfall Corporation, which he had founded in 1935 and has been dedicated to environmental education, conservation projects and planning initiatives in Middlesex County. Restored in 1942, the house opened as a Community Center for non-profit organizations in Middlesex County.

Mohican Hotel (1896)

Frank Munsey, publisher of Munsey’s Magazine, built what was originally called the Munsey Building at 281 State Street in New London in 1896. In an attempt to avoid problems with unions in New York, Munsey housed his magazine publishing operation in the building, but after just six months, a strike by workers led Munsey to shut down the production in New London and convert the building to other uses. It opened as the Mohican Hotel in 1898 and would become one of the finest hotels in Connecticut. Architect William B. Tuthill, designer of New York’s Carnegie Hall (1891), utilized the same, and at that time still new, technique of steel-skeleton framing to create the tall building. In 1916, Munsey added two floors and a roof garden. In the 1980s, the building was converted into housing for the elderly.

The Chapman-Sullivan House (1850)

The home of Norwich’s twelfth mayor, Gurdon Chapman, was built on Broadway in 1850. When he died, he left the house to his niece and it remained in the family until 1946, when it was sold to the Sullivan family. According to The History of New London County, Connecticut (1882), compiled by Duane Hamilton Hurd:

Gurdon Chapman was born in North Stonington in 1792. He went to Norwich in early life and engaged in trade, which subsequently developed into a large grain business, which he prosecuted during the remainder of his life with great financial success. He died in 1862, aged seventy-two years. During his life he was a marked character in the public affairs of the city. Overcoming the obstacles presented by a lack of early education, so common among the country boys of his day, by dint of study and close observation, aided by strong, native, common sense and a remarkably retentive memory, he qualified himself for a leader among his fellow-men and for the high positions of trust which they conferred upon him. For many years he was a member in turn of both branches of the city government, and from 1843 to 1845 was mayor of the city. He was also frequently called to responsible positions in the affairs of the town. He was a clear thinker, a forcible and fluent public speaker, and in all his public and private relations was highly respected and esteemed for his integrity, the kindness of his heart, and the soundness of his judgment as an advisor.

Whitehall Mansion (1771)

The earliest structure built on the original site of Whitehall Mansion, located in the section of Mystic which is in the town of Stonington, was constructed around 1680 by Lt. William Gallup. A tavern and stagecoach stop stood on the site in the 1750s. Whitehall Mansion, named after an ancestor’s home, Whight House, in Essex, England, was built in 1771-1775 by Dr. Dudley Woodbridge (who, in his youth, had made an interesting sketch of buildings in Deerfield, Massachusetts). A secret room in the attic may have housed runaway slaves. Dr, Woodbridge died in 1790 and the house was later owned by the Rodman and Wheeler families. The Mansion‘s last resident, Florence Grace Keach, donated the house to the Stonington Historical Society in 1962 in order to save it from demolition when Interstate-95 was being constructed. The house was moved approximately one hundred yards north and restored. For a time, it was open for tours, but was purchased by the Waterford Hotel Group in 1996 and is now the Whitehall Mansion Inn.

Stratford Shoal Lighthouse (1877)

Stratford Shoal Light marks a dangerous reef located in the middle of Long Island Sound. It was first marked for navigation by a pair of spar buoys in 1820. A lightship was placed there in 1838, but it frequently drifted off its station. Stratford Shoal Lighthouse, constructed on a small, unincorporated, man-made island, was completed in 1877 to replace the lightship. Automated in 1970, it is still an active aid to navigation. Also known as Middle Light, the lighthouse is halfway between Port Jefferson, New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Although the State of New York ceded the territory on which the lighthouse was built, it is classified as a Connecticut lighthouse on official maps. The lighthouse can be seen distantly from the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry. (more…)

St Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Church (1975)

In 1951, a time of Soviet persecution of Ukrainian Catholics in their homeland, Ukrainian exiles settling in the New Britain area founded Saint Josephat’s Ukrainian Catholic Parish. The growth of the parish led to the purchase, in 1955, of a former Assyrian Church on Beatty Street, soon enlarged with materials from a dismantled six-family building from East Hartford, that had been purchased by the parish. In 1966, a house was purchased on Eddy Glover Boulevard to become a rectory and, in 1974, there was a ground breaking on the same Boulevard for the building of a new church. The church was designed by the James P. Cassidy architectural firm of West Hartford and parishioners of St. Josephat’s provided most of the labor for its construction. Completed in 1975, the church has three gold and blue domes, copied from those in St. Sophia Church of Holy Wisdom in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. In 1985, St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic parish and St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox parish worked together in having a new section of Route 9 through New Britain named the Taras Shevchenko Expressway, in honor of the great Ukrainian poet. In 1991, the parish celebrated the independence of Ukraine from the old Soviet Union.