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

Beatrice Fox Auerbach House (1911)

The residence of Beatrice Fox Auerbach, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was built in 1911 and was designed by the firm of LaFarge & Morris. Additions were made to the home in 1923. The Georgian Revival style house also features elements of the Tudor Revival, including the twin gables and a leaded casement bay window. Beatrice Fox Auerbach was the granddaughter of Gerson Fox, who in the 1840s had founded the store in Hartford that would evolve into the G. Fox & Company department store. Beatrice Fox‘s father, Moses Fox, succeeded his father as president of the company and Beatrice married George Auerbach, who eventually became the company’s secretary-treasurer. Her husband died in 1927 and after her father‘s death in 1938, she became the store’s president. Under her leadership, the company grew until it became the largest privately owned store in the country. She remained president until she sold her privately owned stock in 1965. Auerbach, who died in 1968, was also renowned civic leader and philanthropist. A biography by Virginia Hale has recently been published called A Woman in Business: The Life of Beatrice Fox Auerbach. In 1979 the house was given to the University of Hartford.

The Simon Shailer House (1827)

Rev. Simon Shailer became minister of Haddam’s Baptist Church in 1822. In 1827, he built a house on Saybrook Road in Shailerville adjacent to a house he had constructed for his son that same year. The houses are very similar in their Federal style design, although the Simon Shailer House has a Victorian-era balustraded porch with a hipped roof. Another son of Simon Shailer, Nathan Emery Shailer, also became a Baptist minister. After Rev. Simon Shailer died in 1864, his widow and daughter lived there and it is now owned by a descendant.

The Russell Shailer House (1827)

Around 1827 in the Shailerville section of Haddam, where many homes were built by the close-knit Shailer family, Russell Shailer built a Federal style home after his marriage to Huldah B. Arnold. At first, his father, Rev. Simon Shailer, continued to own the land on which the house was built and built a home for himself at the same time next door. When Simon, a Baptist minister, died in 1864, Russell, who was a deacon in the church, received full title to the property. Behind the house was the Shailer and Knowles factory, where stamped and pressed metal products were manufactured from the 1870s to 1914. The houses of both father and son continue to be owned by a descendant of Russell Shailer.

Hayden Chandlery (1813)

Captain Richard Hayden‘s Chandlery in Essex was built in 1813 and originally stood at the corner of Main Street and Novelty Lane. Constructed in the Federal style, it served as a chandlery (a store selling supplies and equipment for seamen and ships). Built next to Hayden‘s shipyard, the building continued to be used as ship’s store, although by the early twentieth century the upper floor housed a tenement. The first floor windows and the projecting windows on the second floor are later additions. The building was moved to its present location in 1949 by the then owners of the Griswold Inn. The chandlery and nearby steamboat dock warehouse were purchased by the Connecticut River Foundation in 1974, in order to preserve the historic waterfront. Renamed the Connecticut River Museum, the institution restored the chandlery in 1975 to display exhibits. Thomas A. Stevens, a former director of Mystic Seaport, died in 1982 and left his library to the museum. That same year, the warehouse had been converted into a museum building and the chandlery was again renovated, this time to hold the Thomas A. Stevens maritime research library.

Noah Pratt House (1805)

In the eighteenth century, Hezekiah Pratt owned farm land in Essex, known as Cornfield Point, which stretched from Main Street south to the Connecticut River. When he died, four of his sons inherited land along the south side of Main Street where they built their homes. One of the sons was Noah Pratt, whose 1805 house was later sold to his brother, Asahel, in 1808 and then to Uriah Hayden in 1817. Uriah Hayden was the grandson of the Uriah Hayden, who ran the Hayden Tavern in Essex, and the great-grandson of Nehemiah Hayden, who had been a loyalist during the Revolutionary War. The house remained in the Hayden family until 1977 and is now used for offices.

Samuel Parsons House (1759)

Built around 1759, the Samuel Parsons House, on Main Street in Wallingford, once served as a tavern when stage coaches stopped there. Featuring many traditional colonial elements, the house is transitional in style because it also has features of the Georgian style, including its two chimneys and the way its rooms are arranged inside. Caleb Thompson bought the house in 1803 and built wagons, carriages, and coffins in his shop on the property. His granddaughter, Fannie Ives Schember, leased the house to the Wallingford Historical Society in 1919 and later left it to the Society in her will. Owned by the Society since 1932, today the house is a museum.

Erastus Kelsey House (1825)

The Erastus Kelsey House, on Main Street in Portland, was built in 1925. Born in Killingworth in 1792, Kelsey married Betsey Deane around 1814. She was the daughter of Phineas Dean, a tavern keeper who also lived on Main Street. Another daughter of Phineas Deane, Harriet, married William McKinstry, a wealthy Middletown merchant.