Amos Bull House (1788)

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This house was originally located on Main Street in Hartford. It was built in 1788 for Amos Bull, a dry goods merchant, who had a shop on the first floor and also ran a school in the house. Bull once lived in the Silas Deane House in Wethersfield and one of his five wives was Abigail Webb from the Webb House. He sold the house in 1821 and it has since been moved twice: once in 1940 and a second time in 1971 to its present location on Prospect Street, behind the Butler-McCook House. The Amos Bull House is a Federal style brick half house, a type of townhouse more commonly found in larger cities than Hartford. In recent years, the building housed the Historic Preservation and Museum Division of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Update: A major restoration of the house was completed in 2014 by Connecticut Landmarks. It is now that organization’s archival repository and offices.

First Church of Christ, Wethersfield (1761)

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Built in Wethersfield in 1761-1764, the First Church of Christ was the town’s third Meeting House. Designed in the Georgian style, it is a rare survival of a brick colonial meeting house. The steeple was most likely modeled on that of an Episcopal church, Trinity Church in Newport, R.I., which was in turn modeled on Christ Church in Boston. George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau attended services here on May 20, 1781, during the period they were holding their important meetings in the nearby Webb House. In 1774, John Adams, who was visiting Silas Deane, wrote in his diary:

“We went up the steeple of Wethersfield meeting-house, from whence is the most grand and beautiful prospect in the world, at least that I ever saw.”

Katharine Seymour Day House (1884)

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Built in 1884 on the corner of Farmington Avenue and Forest Street in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood, for the lawyer and real estate developer Franklin Chamberlin. Chamberlin was also the original owner of of the neighboring Harriet Beecher Stowe House and he sold Mark Twain the land to build his house, which is also next door. The architect of the Chamberlin-Day House was Francis Kimball, who is most well-known for his skyscrapers. It was later owned by Willie O. Burr, owner and editor of the Hartford Times. In 1939, the house was bought by Katharine Seymour Day, the grand-daughter of John and Isabella Beecher Hooker and the grand-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Day was living in the Stowe House and rented the Day House to her cousins. She later used the house to store her collection of art, antiques, and documents, many associated with the Beecher, Stowe, Hooker and Seymour families. In 1941, she founded what would become the Stowe-Day Foundation, now known as the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. After her death, the Stowe House was restored and the Day House continues today as the offices and research library of the Stowe Center.

Cove Warehouse (1690)

Cove Warehouse in Wethersfield

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.

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Avon Congregational Church (1819)

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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.