The house at 5000 Durham Road in Guilford has been variously dated to 1711, 1754 and 1789. Known as the Samuel Russell II House, it is part of Bluff Head Farm, which includes several historic barns. The farm is located across the street from the entrance to Braemore Preserve (more…)
The building at 95 Tolland Green in Tolland was erected in 1880 as the Lee Methodist Church. It was the second Lee Methodist Church built on the site, replacing the earlier church, built in 1794. That building was moved back 200 feet and in later years was known as the “ole vaporatin’ house” where apples were dried. It was torn down after suffering damage in the Hurricane of 1938.
The Lee Methodist Church merged with the Tolland Congregational Church in 1920, forming the Federated Church of Tolland (now the United Congregational Church of Tolland). In 1959, the old 1880 church building was sold to the Tolland Grange #51. Formed in 1886, the grange had already been using the building for meetings since 1932. In addition to the Grange, other groups, such as the Boys Scouts, met in the building over the years. Before St. Matthew Catholic Church was built, the parish used the Grange Hall as its temporary home and celebrated the first Catholic mass in Tolland there on July 12, 1964. The Grange put the building up for sale in 2012 and it was sold the following year.
The building at 122 Water Street in Torrington, constructed in 1901, was first known as the New Century Hotel. Later called the Palmer House, it was designed by Charles Palmer, who was also the architect of the Fire House across the street. Both buildings were built by Hotchkiss Brothers.
Sometime between the evening of Saturday, November 9 and the morning of Monday, November 11, 1861, robbers stole approximately $60,000, from the Winsted Bank. About $8,000 of this was in specie (gold and silver) and the rest included miscellaneous bills and treasury notes. The bank had been formed in 1848 (making it the second oldest bank in Litchfield County after the branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford on North Street in Litchfield) and the bank building was erected at 690 Main Street in 1851. Many of the stolen bills were Winsted Bank notes and the loss from the robbery led to the bank having insufficient net worth to receive a federal bank charter. The bank closed in 1864 and the building was acquired by the Winsted Savings Bank in 1867.
The house at 158 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1874 or 1876 for Thomas Trowbridge. This was likely Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge, Jr. (1839-1898), a New Haven shipping merchant who traded with the West Indies. Trowbridge had his summer home in Litchfield, where he died in 1898. Later owners of the house included Mrs. Blanche Bucklin (in 1920) and Franklin Coe, who remodeled the house in 1940 from its original Victorian appearance to the Colonial Revival style.
The Greek Revival house at 97 Chaplin Street in Chaplin was built c. 1840.
The house at 145 South Street in Litchfield was built about 1871 as a summer home for Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin. It remained in the Wiggin family until 1978, its residents including Charlotte Wiggin and Lewis Wiggin. Among the house’s later owners were Hope and Benjamin Gaillard. Designed by architect Florentine Pelletier of New York, the house originally had a wrap-around veranda that was removed in the 1940s by Frederick Wiggin’s grandson.
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