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

Stevens-Frisbie House (1854)

The Stevens-Frisbie House is an Italianate-style home built in 1853-1854 at the intersection of Main Street and New Lane in Cromwell. It was built by John Stevens, who came to Cromwell in the 1830s and, with his brother Elisha, founded the J & E Stevens Company, which manufactured hardware and toys, including mechanical banks. After John Stevens’s death, his widow sold the house to Russel Frisbie in 1892. Frisbie was superintendent of J & E Stevens and had lived in a neighboring house on Main Street since 1873. The house was passed down in the Frisbie family, until it was bequeathed, with all of its Victorian-era furnishings, to the Cromwell Historical Society in 1968. It now serves as the Society’s headquarters and is open to the public for tours as a historic house museum. The most significant alteration to the house has been the turn-of-the-century addition of a Colonial Revival-style front porch. (more…)

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford (1870)

The First Presbyterian Church of Hartford was formed in 1851 and had several homes until a chapel, in 1868, and then a sanctuary, in 1870, were built. Located on Capitol Avenue, near the Bushnell Memorial, the First Presbyterian Church was designed by Renwick & Sands (James Renwick, Jr. was architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington D.C.). It is a polychromatic stone building in the High Victorian Romanesque style.

The Travelers Tower (1919)

The first part of the Travelers Building was constructed in 1906 as the headquarters of the Travelers Property Casualty Corporation, founded in Hartford in 1864. The company, now part of The Travelers Companies, has had many firsts in the history of insurance, including the first automobile, commercial airline and space travel policies. The first section of the Travelers building to be built, in 1906, was the Renaissance Revival-style structure facing Main Street in Hartford. The building began to expand southwards in 1912, with the 527-foot tower, featuring classical influences, being completed in 1919, at which time it was the tallest building in New England and the seventh tallest in the world. The architect was Donn Barber of New York. In 1963, after the removal of some adjacent buildings between the tower and the Wadsworth Atheneum, a new grand entrance plaza was created facing south. More recently, the building has become a nesting site for Peregrine Falcons. A camera was set up to study them, which is also available to the public online. Visitors can go to the top of the Travelers Tower in the Summer.

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John Goodrich House (1760)

John Goodrich was a descendant early Glastonbury settlers. His house, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built in 1760. After his death, his daughters sold it to a cousin, Israel Goodrich. In 1806, the year he married Harriet Miller, he modernized the interior, reducing the size of the original kitchen fireplace. The home is currently for sale.

Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. House (1769)

Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. was the son of Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., Connecticut’s governor during the Revolutionary War. He was the brother of the artist John Trumbull, who painted notable scenes from the Revolution. Jonathan Jr. served during the war himself as Military Sectary to George Washington, replacing Alexander Hamilton in that position in 1781 and holding it throughout the Yorktown Campaign. After the war, Trumbull served as Governor of Connecticut (1797-1809). Trumbull’s house, on the Green in Lebanon, was originally built around 1769 by his father and was remodeled during the war in the fashionable Georgian style by the master builder Isaac Fitch. George Washington spent the night of March 4, 1781 in the home, which is now owned and operated as a house museum by the Town of Lebanon.

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UCONN School of Law (1926)

Originally the campus of the Hartford Seminary, the Collegiate Gothic-style buildings of the University of Connecticut’s School of Law are located along Fern Street and Girard Avenue in Hartford. The land was purchased by the Seminary in 1913 and the original buildings were constructed in 1922-1926, designed by the firm of Allen & Collens, architects of New York’s Riverside Church. In 1978, the state authorized $6 million for the Law School, founded in 1921, to purchase and renovate the campus. The Seminary moved to a new adjacent building and the Law School occupied the old campus in 1984. In 1996 a new library was constructed on the campus, which has recently been revealed to have significant structural problems.

Edward Augustus Russell House (1842)

Edward Augustus Russell was the brother of the Middletown merchant Samuel Russell. Edward A. Russell served as mayor of Middletown and a state representative. His Greek Revival-style house was built on High Street in Middletown in 1841-1842, next to his brother’s home of 1828. Like the Samuel Russell House, Edward’s house may have been designed by the important architect Ithiel Town. Significant alterations were made when a third floor was added in 1930.