The George W. Cheney House, one of the Cheney mansions in Manchester, is located across Hartford Road from the Frank Cheney, Jr. House. Built around 1860, the house has a distinctive pyramidal roof, with shed dormers, and a shed-roofed front porch.
Donated by William Wood, of South Windsor, in honor of his parents, Dr. William Wood (a distinguished ornithologist) and Mary Ellsworth Wood, the Wood Memorial Library, on Main Street, served as the one of town’s two libraries from its dedication, in 1928, into the 1970s, when a new library building was constructed on Sullivan Avenue. In 1971, the non-profit Friends of Wood Memorial Library was founded to oversee its continued operation, through private funds, as a library, museum and historical archive. The library, built between 1926 and 1928, was designed by the Hartford architect William Marchant in the Colonial Revival style, with features drawn from the Federal period.
The first St. Joseph Church, Bristol’s first Catholic church, was built in 1855. This original wood building, enlarged in 1879, was eventually replaced by the current granite church, dedicated in 1925. Designed by Joseph A. Jackson in the English Tudor Gothic style (or Perpendicular Gothic), the church is on Queen Street, facing Federal Hill Green.
The Jonathan Camp House, at 1430 Asylum Avenue in Hartford, may look familiar to those interested in American history. It is a virtual replica of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, in Virginia, but features some grand additions to its model, including a much fancier entry with a semicircular fanlight and side lights, as well as an elaborate balustrade along the roof. Mount Vernon also influenced the design of other Colonial Revival style houses, like the Hill-Stead, but this house, designed by Edward T. Hapgood and built in 1911, follows the first president’s home very closely, with some early twentieth century aggrandizement.
The house constructed in 1892 for Walter A. Ingraham, on Prospect Place in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Bristol, is a rare survival of a type of high-style Queen Anne house. It has a base of granite and was built of brick with elaborately ornamented terra cotta detailing. The corner tower also features a distinctive copper roof. In the year the house was built, Walter Ingraham succeeded his father, Edward Ingraham, as president of the E. Ingraham Clock Company. Walter Ingraham’s brother and neighbor, William S. Ingraham, served as the company’s treasurer and secretary and the houses of both brothers were heated through pipes linked to the Ingraham Company’s furnaces.
The Joseph W. Cone House is one of the few surviving Victorian era houses on Collins Street in Hartford. Dating to 1890, this Queen Anne style house features a turret with a conical roof, sunburst designs on the gable-ends and roof crestings made of iron and terra-cotta. The original front porch, visible in historic photographs, has been removed.
The history of Windsor’s Congregational Church goes back to 1630, when its founding members arrived in Massachusetts with John Winthrop‘s fleet. In 1635, they left Dorchester, Mass and settled in Windsor. The town and congregation soon grew under the leadership of their minister, John Warham, and their teacher of church doctrine, Ephraim Huit. The church’s first building was located in the center of Palisado Green. The current First Church in Windsor, on Palisado Avenue, was built in 1794, but was significantly altered in 1844 with the replacement of the original steeple and the addition of a columned portico, both in the Greek Revival style.
