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

Rev. Noah Porter House (1808)

When the Reverend Noah Porter, minister of First Church in Farmington for sixty years, 1806-1866, married Mehitable Meigs in 1808, he built a brick house on Main Street. The children he and is wife “Hetty” would raise in the house included Dr. Noah Porter, Jr., a philosophical writer and president of Yale, and Sarah Porter, who founded Miss Porter’s School. In 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the oldest society for foreign missions in the United States, was established in a meeting at the Porter House. The first missionaries would be sent overseas in 1812. In 1841, Margru, one of the three girls who survived from the Amistad, lived in the Porter House for eight months. Sarah Porter continued to live in the house after her father’s death in 1866, adding the third floor in the 1880s. (more…)

Thomas MacDonough Russell House (1902)

The Colonial Revival home of Thomas MacDonough Russell, built in 1901-1902, is located on High Street in Middletown. Russell was a descendant of Samuel Russell, whose famous 1828 Greek Revival House is across the street. The Thomas MacDonough Russell House currently houses Wesleyan University‘s Center for African American Studies.

Northam Memorial Chapel (1882)

Col. Charles H. Northam, a Hartford businessman, was director of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Association and donated funds for the construction of the cemetery’s Northam Memorial Chapel, completed in 1882. It was designed by the important Hartford Architect, George Keller, in what he described as the “Modern Gothic” style, his simplified version of the Gothic Revival style. The chapel was restored in 1999, after being unused for nearly fifty years, and today houses the cemetery’s offices.

Cheney Homestead (1785)

The brothers, Timothy and Benjamin Cheney, were important early American clockmakers. Timothy built the Cheney Family Homestead around 1785, and used a nearby brook to operate a grist mill that he built around 1790. After Timothy’s death in 1795, his oldest son, George Cheney, inherited the house. Among George‘s numerous children, his sons John and Seth became noted artists, while Charles, Ralph, Ward, Rush and Frank founded what would become the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company. Today the Homestead is museum, owned and operated since 1969 by the Manchester Historical Society.

All Saints Orthodox Church (1964)

The congregation of All Saints Orthodox Church was founded in Hartford in 1914. The original church building was on Broad Street, near the State Capitol. In 1956, land was purchased on Scarborough Street for a new church, which was not constructed until 1963-1964. Each November, the church has a Russian Tea Room and Bazaar. Today is Christmas, but some Russian-American Orthodox Christians will celebrate Christmas on January 7, the date of Russian Christmas.

S Razhd?stvOm!

John Francis Tavern (1764)

An early brick building, constructed on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield, the John Francis Tavern of 1764 was built in the same year the town’s brick meetinghouse was completed. Like the John Robbins House, also used as a tavern and built a few years later in what would become Rocky Hill, the Francis Tavern features a stringcourse as a decorative element.

Horace Bushnell Congregational Church (1914)

Hartford’s Fourth Congregational Church, modeled on New Haven’s Center Church on the Green, was built downtown on Main Street in 1850. This original building can be seen in a number of historic photographs. In 1913, the Main Street property was sold for commercial development. William F. Brooks, the architect of Hartford’s Municipal Building and the New Britain Public Library, persuaded the congregation to keep the original church’s steeple and portico and use them on the new church, completed in 1914, at the intersection of Albany Avenue and Vine Street. Thanks to this early work of historic preservation, the later building preserves an important part of a demolished historic structure. The Fourth Congregational Church merged in 1953 with Windsor Avenue Congregational Church to form the Horace Bushnell Congregational Church. The church is now home to Liberty Christian Center International. (more…)