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

Cove Warehouse (1690)

Built around 1690 at Wethersfield, where there was a bend in the Connecticut River in the seventeenth century. At that time, this and other warehouses stored goods like lumber and foodstuffs (including Wethersfield’s famous red onions) before transport as part of the town’s flourishing trade with the West Indies. In exchange, Wethersfield’s merchants and ship captains would import sugar, molasses and rum from the Caribbean. Around 1700, a hurricane changed the course of the river, turning what was once a bend in the river into the present cove. The accompanying flood swept away the other six warehouses, leaving only this one. It was restored in 1934 and is today a museum run by the Wethersfield Historical Society which houses an exhibit on Wethersfield’s maritime history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Avon Congregational Church (1819)

Built in 1819 on West Main Street (Route 44), the Avon Congregational Church was designed by the Waterbury-born builder and architect David Hoadley. It is very similar to Hoadley’s 1813 Congregational Church in Norfolk, CT. His masterpiece is New Haven’s United Church on the Green, but the churches in Avon, Norfolk and several other towns, all located west of the Connecticut River and either designed by Hoadley or under his influence, represent simpler versions, suited for smaller communities. Originally part of Farmington, the Avon congregation was recognized as a separate parish, called Northington, in 1751. A split in the Northington church occurred in 1817, when a majority chose to build a new meetinghouse in the west of town, the West Avon Congregational Church–those in the minority went on to build the Avon Congregational Church. Northington became the town of Avon in 1830.

George W. Loomis House (1860)

Built in 1860 on South Main Street in Suffield by the tobacco baron John Welles Loomis for his son, George W. Loomis. In 1912, a group of Polish residents bought the Italianate house, which now serves as the rectory for the adjacent St. Joseph’s Church. Behind the house is St. Joseph’s Convent.

Tapping Reeve House (1773) and Litchfield Law School (1782)

Litchfield Law School (left) & Tapping Reeve House (right)

Tapping Reeve, a lawyer, and his wife, Sally Burr Reeve, settled in Litchfield in 1773. The next year, Reeve began teaching law to his wife’s brother, Aaron Burr, who was living with the couple. Starting with this single student, Reeve developed a curriculum which would be taught to almost 1,000 students over the following decades, as he expanded from his home to a one-room school house he had built next-door, in 1784. Because this was a time before the creation of formal law schools at the major Universities, this Litchfield Law School is regarded as being the oldest law school in the country. The school’s students included such notables as John C. Calhoun and Oliver Wolcott, Jr. In 1798, Reeve was joined by James Gould and the two operated the school together until 1820. Gould would continue to run it until 1833. The law school building was later moved from the site, but was eventually returned and restored in 1976. Today both the house and school are open as a museum run by the Litchfield Historical Society. (more…)

The Mark Twain House (1874)

Built in 1874 on Farmington Avenue in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood for Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and designed in the High Victorian Gothic style by Edward Tuckerman Potter (who was known for his churches, including the Church of the Good Shepherd). Mark Twain lived here from 1874-1891 with his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, and their three daughters: Suzy, Clara and Jean. His wife was the one primarily involved in planning with the architect–apparently all Sam Clemens asked for was a red brick house! He also had a servant’s wing and a carriage house and employed about seven or so servants, including his butler, George Griffin, maid Katy Leary and coachman Patrick McAleer. It was while living here that Mark Twain wrote such classic works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Bad financial decisions, including his investment in the Paige Compositor typesetting machine, led to near bankruptcy, and forced the Clemens family to move to Europe in 1891. After a round-the-world lecture tour, Clemens was able to pay off his debt, but as his eldest daughter Suzy had died in the Hartford house during a return visit there in 1896, the family never returned there and he sold the house in 1904. Over the years, the house was used as a school, a library and an apartment building. It was restored in the 1960s and 1970s and is open as part of The Mark Twain House and Museum.

First Church, Farmington (1771)

Built in 1771 in Farmington as the third Meeting House of a congregation which originated in 1652. The First Church of Christ, Congregational was built by Capt. Judah Woodruff and features a steeple which has been described as perhaps the most beautiful in New England. The building‘s Greek Revival porch was added in the nineteenth century. This church shows the evolution from a square colonial Meeting House to a Georgian church with a tower at one end. In the nineteenth century, the freed Amistad survivors were supported by members of the congregation and attended services here when they came to Farmington in 1841, awaiting the funds to return to Africa.

Sarah Whitman Hooker House (1720)

Built in the early eighteenth century on New Britain Avenue in West Hartford for Timothy Seymour. The house was gradually expanded throughout the century from an original one room “with chamber above” into a saltbox. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, a later owner removed the saltbox addition and remodeled in the Federal style, enlarging the house to its current size. The home is named for Sarah Whitman Hooker. Her husband, Thomas Hart Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, bought the house in 1773. When he died after going to fight at Boston in 1775, she lodged two Tory prisoners of war in the home during the winter of 1775-1776. The house has been restored and is currently a open as a museum.