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

J.C. Brown House (1833)

The J.C. Brown House was originally built, on Maple Street in Bristol, for the clockmaker Lawson Ives in 1833. Lawson and his uncle Chauncey Ives began the clock-making firm of C. and L.C. Ives in 1830. The company eventually failed in the wake of the 1837 Panic and ensuing depression. The house was sold in 1844 to J.C. Brown, another clockmaker, who often had the image of his house painted tablet of his ogee shelf clocks. After his bankruptcy in 1856, Brown’s clock company was bought by the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Company (later to become the Sessions Clock Company). The Greek Revival style Brown House has two entrances with columned porticos: the one facing Maple Street (west elevation) has Ionic columns and the one facing Woodland Street (south elevation) has Doric columns. The house has been converted for use as offices.

Dr. Roger Waldo House (1750)

At the intersection of Moulton Road and the Old Turnpike in Mansfield is a one-and-a-half story house with overhanging gable ends, probably built in the middle of the eighteenth century. Around 1770, it was purchased by Seth Pierce, Sr. and Jr., who sold it to Dr. Roger Waldo in 1798. Waldo, who died in 1816, was a prominent physician and representative at the Connecticut General Assembly. There is evidence of a blacksmith shop possibly having been on the property, which would have served the Mansfield Four Corners community.

The Clifford D. Cheney House (1904)

One of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers, the Clifford D. Cheney House, on Forest Street in Manchester, faces Hartford Road across the “Great Lawn,” around which the mansions are situated. The house, like a number of the other Cheney mansions, was designed by Charles Adams Platt, an architect, artist and landscape designer, whose mother was Mary Elizabeth Cheney. The house is distinctive with its pink stuccoed exterior.

Windham Town Hall (1896)

The town of Windham held its first public meeting in 1691. As the area of Willimantic grew after the Civil War, various buildings in the borough were used for town meetings. Having utilized a room in the Savings Institute building, in 1880 the town offices were settled in the Hayden Block. Rising rents forced another move to a space above a silk mill. By 1893, when Willimantic became a city, the need for a city hall and county court building was clear, one that would serve all of Windham. There was much dissension in town over the cost and location of the new structure. After some prolonged political battles among various factions, construction began in 1895 and was completed in 1896. The impressive Victorian style building , with its elaborate clock tower, was designed by the noted architect, Warren Richard Briggs, (author of the 1899 book, Modern American School Buildings). A detailed history of the Town Hall‘s construction can be found in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) at the Thread City website.

The Corner House (1783)

Located at the corner of Main Street and Farmington Avenue in Farmington, the Corner House was built around 1783, perhaps incorporating part of an earlier dwelling that was on the property when it was acquired by the brothers, Daniel and Eleazer Curtiss, in 1774. In 1807, the house was bought by Elijah Cowles, Jr. and Jonathan Cowles. In more recent times the building was a restaurant. Today it is used for offices and the Farmington Inn is attached to it.

The Dexter-Adams House (1781)

The Dexter-Adams House, on Centre Street in Mansfield, was built sometime after the land it was constructed on was purchased in 1781 by William and Nathan Dexter. It was purchased in 1803 by Barzillai Swift and was later lived in by his daughter, Lucy, and her husband, Dr. Jabez Adams, one of Mansfield and Windham’s physicians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He worked for a while in partnership with his brother-in-law, Dr. Earl Swift. Dr. Adams’ daughter, Alice, married the builder Edwin Fitch, who possibly made some of the later alterations to the house. The nineteenth century changes include the addition of a mansard roof and a porch.

Beleden (1910)

Beleden, one of Connecticut’s great high-style mansions, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol. Designed by the architect Samuel Brown of Boston, Beleden was built for William Edwin Sessions, of the Sessions Clock Company. The Sessions family operated a foundry that had been producing castings for the E.N. Welch Company, a Forrestville clock manufacturer. Around 1900, Sessions purchased E.N. Welch and in 1903 renamed it the Sessions Clock Company. In 1906, William E. Sessions, who had been living in a house on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, purchased the adjacent house and land of Nathan L. Birge. The Birge House was torn down and over the next 4 years Beleden, completed in 1910, was constructed. The U-shaped brownstone mansion was once the centerpiece of a large estate, which featured formal and English gardens, a pool, greenhouses and grape arbors. These former grounds were later divided by Beleden Gardens Drive and built-up with smaller homes. Two buildings, a coachman’s lodge and a gardener’s cottage, were originally part of the estate but are now separated from the main house by newer structures.