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.
Earlier believed to have been built by Andrew Hale around 1754, with alterations made later in the Federal-style, the Hale-Rankin House is now thought to have been built in the Federal style in 1789. Located on Main Street in Glastonbury, it was built by Benjamin Hale and was later owned by the Reverend Samuel Rankin in the nineteenth century. Rankin was an abolitionist who told stories of people fleeing slavery by crossing the ice on the Ohio River. These stories influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s story of Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The house’s doorway is featured in Plate XXIV of Frederick Kelly’s Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut. Post Edited 5/27/08.
The Orient Insurance Company Building was constructed in 1905, on Trinity Street in Hartford, next to the Bushnell Memorial Hall and near the State Capitol. It is just around the corner from Elm Street, which by the 1920s became known as Insurance Row, after four more companies built offices there near the Capitol. Designed by Davis & Brooks in the grand Beaux-Arts style, the Orient Insurance Company Building originally featured a large dome, which is no longer extant. The building now serves as state offices.
The house at 101 Palisado Avenue in Windsor was built in 1755 for Rev. William Russell, who in 1754 had become the minister of the town’s First Congregational Church. It remained in a private home until it was purchased in the 1950s to become a rectory for the First Church. (more…)
An excellent example of Art Deco style architecture, the Polish National Home, on Charter Oak Avenue in Hartford, was completed in 1930. Together with SS. Cyril and Methodius Church, it was once at the center of Hartford’s Polish community. Although that community has since dispersed throughout the Greater-Hartford area, the Polish National Home continues to serve the region’s Polish-Americans. An informative article from the Hartford Courant provides interesting background information on this historyczna budowla stanu Connecticut.
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What is now known as the Ebenezer Plummer House was originally built in 1750 by Dr. Elizur Hale, who ended up not being able to afford the house he had built on Main Street in Glastonbury. He sold it to Ebenezer Plummer, a successful merchant. Plummer moved to Glastonbury from Boston in the 1750s and his house displays some architectural features perhaps more common to eastern Massachusetts than to the Connecticut River Valley. Plummer was a town leader during the Revolutionary War. The house was moved to its current location in on Main Street in 1947, when Douglas Road was constructed connecting to Main Street at the home’s original site. Post Edited 5/27/08.
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