The former Torrington Fire Department Headquarters building is a two-story brick structure with a corner bell tower. Located at 117 Water Street, the building was designed by Charles S. Palmer in the Romanesque Revival style and was erected by Hotchkiss Brothers & Company. It was completed in February 1901, with a one-story rear addition, providing work areas for mechanics, constructed about 1905. The building replaced an earlier wood frame firehouse on the site that was moved back to make way for the new structure (it was later removed from the property entirely). Wired for electricity, the building had a number of innovative features, including an alarm system that automatically released the horses from their stalls and lowered a harness suspended from the ceiling. The 1901 building served as a firehouse until 1980. The current Fire Department Headquarters is located just next door, at 111 Water Street.
The village of Yantic developed as an industrial area in Norwich in the first half of the nineteenth century. Textile manufacturing began in 1818 with the construction of cotton mills. These were acquired in 1824 by sea captain Ersastus Williams, who installed machinery to produce woolens. In 1865, his son, E. Winslow Williams, took charge of the mills, which would become known as the Yantic Woolen Company. That same year, a fire destroyed the original mills and Williams replaced them with the present stone mill building. The company was placed in receivership in 1913 and the mill would continue to operate under a number of successive owners until 1988. The building is often called the Hale Mill because the last company to use it was the Hale Manufacturing Company, which produced yarn for automobile upholstery fabric. Since 1995, plans to convert the former mill into a hotel were long delayed by financial difficulties and foreclosure. Last year, the building was acquired by a new developer, who received permission to proceed with the project from the Historic District Commission.
At 48 Main Street in Middletown, just south of the Inn at Middletown, is a center-chimney colonial house built in 1753. In that year, Constant Kirtland sold the property with a partially erected house to Charles Boardman, who completed and first occupied the structure. It was next acquired by Charles Chadwick in 1758. Chadwick erected the barn that still stands behind the house. Deacon Joseph Clark bought the property in 1762 and operated an apothecary in the building. The building continued to be used for mixed commercial/residential purposes for over a century. In the late 1970s the house was restored and adapted for new commercial use as part of a redevelopment planned by preservationist John F. Reynolds III (which included the relocation and restoration of the houses now at 49, 61 and 73 Main Street).
A.C. Petersen Farms is a landmark restaurant and creamery at 240 Park Road in West Hartford. The company‘s origins go back to 1914, when Andrew C. Petersen, a Danish immigrant, purchased several milk delivery routes. He soon expanded his business, acquiring the property on Park Road, where he produced milk and ice cream. In 1939, Petersen moved two houses on the site to nearby Washington Circle to make way for the present ice cream parlor and restaurant. Over the years, A.C. Petersen’s would grow as a business to have thirteen locations in the greater Hartford area. These would eventually close, leaving only the original with the Petersen’s name. In 2000, Andrew C. Petersen’s grandson sold the restaurant part of the business to the Rhode Island-based restaurant chain, Newport Creamery, while a group of local businessmen acquired the ice cream plant and continue to produce Petersen’s ice cream. Two years later, the restaurant was acquired by Catherine Denton, who had been A.C. Petersen’s longtime accountant. In 2013, the company acquired a second location in Old Lyme. In 2016, MSN named Petersen’s milkshake the best in Connecticut.
The former home of the Danbury Library, located at 256 Main Street, was built in 1876-1878 and served as the city’s library until the current building was erected at 170 Main Street in 1970. Beginning in 1771, there had been several successive library organizations in Danbury, the last of which disbanded in the 1850s. As related in James Montgomery Bailey’s History of Danbury, Conn. (1896), the creation of a permanent library was
substantially the gift of one family, that of the late E. Moss White, [a successful farmer and merchant] of Danbury. The late William Augustus White, of Brooklyn, son of E. Moss White, by his last will and testament bequeathed the sum of $10,000, to be paid five years after his decease, for the establishment of a public library in his native borough of Danbury. The Legislature of Connecticut, at its session in 1869, passed an act incorporating the Danbury Library, which act was approved by the Governor, June 5th, 1869. On June 1st, 1870, Alexander M. White, of Brooklyn, brother of William Augustus White, and sole executor of his will, placed at the disposal of the trustees of the library the house on Main Street, in which he was born and in which his parents died, to be used for library purposes until a suitable building could be erected upon the premises.
The E. Moss White White Homestead, erected in 1790, housed the library until 1876. At that point, Alexander M. White (who was a partner in Danbury’s leading hatters’ fur processing firm) donated the house and land to the library. With his brother, George Granville White, he provided the funds necessary to move the house to a rear lot and erect a brand new library building in its place. Designed by architect Lorenzo Wheeler, the Danbury Library opened in 1878. It became a free library in 1893. Initially, the downstairs rooms were rented for offices with the library on the second story. Later, the lower level was converted into the Children’s Room. In the 1930s, artist Charles Federer of Bethel, painted murals depicting fairy tales in the Children’s Room as a W.P.A. project. Today the former library building is the Danbury Music Center. In 1994, the Marian Anderson Recital Hall was dedicated on the second floor. (more…)
John Havens Sawyer was a Mystic ship captain engaged in fishing and coastal trading. In 1835 he built the Greek Revival-style house at 5 Stanton Place in Mystic. Sawyer and his wife, Elsey, only lived in the house a short time. In 1838 he sold it to Charles Mallory and moved to Key West, Florida.
