A section at the rear of the house at 811 Worthington Ridge in Berlin may date to 1790, when Jedediah Norton is said to have erected the residence, but the bulk of the building was built between 1800 and 1840 and displays elements of the Federal and Greek Revival styles. For a time in the nineteenth century the house was the residence of Dr. Horatio Gridley, a physician.
The 1876, Second Empire-style Frances E. Hale House, on Main Street in Glastonbury, looks like an appropriate house to post on Halloween!
This is also an appropriate day to announce the start of a new companion blog to Historic Buildings of Connecticut called Historic Gravestones of Souther New England! It will not be updated quite as frequently as this blog is, but please check it out!
Also, this blog is now six months old! To celebrate, I have added a poll. Please vote! (Poll now closed).
Edit (5/27/08): The house replaced the earlier home of Timothy Hale, later occupied by his son, Atwater Hale. After Atwater’s death in 1874, his widow Frances had this house built and invited her daughter, Deborah and son-in-law, John Q. Goodrich, to move in and help run the family tobacco farm.
Built in 1862 and 1863, on Charter Oak Place in Hartford, two Italianate double houses, the Pease House (above) and the neighboring Fenn-Eaton House (below), are among the earliest duplexes in the country. While three stories are visible when viewing the two houses’ facades, they both actually have five stories.
Built around 1693, on Main Street, by the town of Glastonbury for its first minister, Reverend Timothy Stevens. Building a Meeting House and having a resident minister were requirements the new town had to meet to seperate from Wethersfield. Given a choice between a 20-foot house, or one twice the length–provided he supplied the nails, glass and iron–the minister opted for the larger size. The house is also notable for having an early brick foundation. Like other seventeenth century houses in Glastonbury, the house faces south.
Located on Main Street in Glastonbury, the house built by William Wickham was constructed in two sections. The first section, built in 1685, with its front facade facing south, was originally a saltbox. After the marriage of William Wickham‘s son John, in 1716, an addition was completed the following year, facing Main Street, which had been laid out in 1698. The new addition featured a gambrel roof and the roof on the south facade was adjusted to match it.
Thomas Hale was one of the petitioners who sought a separation of Glastonbury from Wethersfield in 1690. Licensed as a tavern keeper, Hale built his house, on Main Street in Glastonbury, in 1714 [recently amended to the 1760s at the earliest: see comment below]. One of the oldest houses in town, it is currently owned by the neighboring First Church of Christ, Congregational.
Over 25 years after designing the Church of the Good Shepherd in 1869, Elizabeth Colt persuaded Edward Tuckerman Potter to come out of retirement and design a Parish House for the church in 1896. The new structure was built as memorial to her son, Caldwell Hart Colt, an ardent yachtsman, who had died at sea in mysterious circumstances. Many of the decorative features of the building therefore have a nautical inspiration. Its High Victorian Gothic style, already well out of fashion when it was built, matches well stylistically with the neighboring church building.
