Manchester Area Conference of Churches (1898)

On October 11, 1898, the Hartford Courant reported an item of news from South Manchester: “The John Wesley Pentecostal Church has begun the erection of a church building on the lot north of Mrs. Catherine Cotter’s house at the center.” The church, founded in 1897, joined a new denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, in 1908. The Manchester Church of the Nazarene moved to a new church building in 1958. The 1898 church, located at 466 Main Street is now home to the Manchester Area Conference of Churches, which manages such charities as the Community Kitchen and the Community Threads Thrift Shoppe.

P. T. Barnum Birthplace (1768)

The great showman P. T. Barnum was born in 1810 in a house, built in 1768, at 55 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel. He lived in town until 1834-35. Starting in 1819, his father, Philo Barnum (1780-1825), ran a tavern in Bethel. The current Greek Revival style of the house is an alteration of the original saltbox home, as repaired after a fire in 1835 (or in the 1840s). The front portion of the house was destroyed, leaving only the kitchen and woodhouse. P. T. Barnum’s mother, Irena Taylor Barnum (1764-1868), who continued to operate the tavern after her husband’s death until 1835, lived in the house until her own death in 1868. [another source says that the original birthplace house was replaced by the current house on the site in 1843 and that Irena Barnum, who had moved away before that time, later repurchased the family’s old property).

White Hall, WCSU (1925)

White Hall, a building on the campus of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, was erected in 1923-1925 as Danbury High School. By the 1960s, growth in Danbury’s population led to the construction of a new High School on Clapboard Ridge, which was dedicated in 1965. The former High School building was purchased by the university in 1964. Named in honor of Alexander White, the school’s original benefactor, it serves as a multi-purpose academic building.

Whaler’s Inn – Hoxie House (2002)

In 2002, the Whaler’s Inn in Mystic erected a building at the corner of East Main and Cottrell Streets, on the site of an earlier hotel, the Hoxie House, which opened in 1861. The Hoxie House, built by Benjamin F. Hoxie, had replaced an earlier commercial and lodging building, called the U. S. Hotel, erected by Nathaniel Clift in 1818. The U. S. Hotel building had burned down in 1858 and the old Hoxie House building burned down in 1975. The new Hoxie House reflects the Italianate style of the original Hoxie House, featuring a cupola and decorative brackets.

Maj. Samuel Wolcott House (1750)

The house at 381 Wolcott Hill Road in Wethersfield is believed to have been built by Maj. Samuel Wolcott about 1750. The Wolcott Coat of Arms are painted on a panel over the mantel in the house’s north parlor. A later resident was Elisha Wolcott (1755-1827), a hat maker. He married Mary Welles in 1775 and soon after served in the Revolutionary War in Capt. Hanmer’s company As related in Vol. I of Henry R. Stiles’ History of Ancient Wethersfield (1904):

Elisha Wolcott, gt-gd-son of Samuel Wolcott 2nd, after some service in the army at New York in the summer and autumn of 1776, is said, at Gen. Washington’s suggestion, to have returned to his home in Wethersfield for the purpose of making hats for the soldiers — and one of the “hat blocks” used by him in this manufacture, at the old Samuel Wolcott (present Bourne) house, is still in possession of his descendants.—Letter of Mrs. J. W. Griswold.