The first Danbury lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was established in 1842. The fraternal order later erected the building at 18-20 West Street in Danbury as Odd Fellows Hall. Built in 1911, the stuccoed building was designed by Danbury architect Philip Sunderland. It is now home to the Ecuadorian Civic Center of Greater Danbury.
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At 8 Dust House Road in Hazardville is a small brick building constructed in 1850. It is a rare survivor among the 125 buildings built by the Hazard Powder Company, which produced gunpowder and explosives in Enfield from 1835 to 1913.
The house at 44 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built c. 1810 by Ansel Bristol, a farmer. It was later home to Anson W. Bristol, Jr. A tradition holds that the carpenters who built the house came from working on the Canton Center Congregational Church, which would date the house to c. 1815. The house is also said to have floors that were reused from one of Canton’s earliest churches, dating to the seventeenth century. There is an ell that may have been added from earlier house, built in the middle of the eighteenth century by Isaac Tuller. The house is also said to have been home to the first telephone in Canton. (more…)
The house at 392 Saybrook Road in Higganum (in the Town of Haddam) has a sign that reads “Geo. W. Smith c. 1815.” There was a George W. Smith who represented Haddam in the legislature in the 1820s.
The Queen Anne Victorian house at 187 South Main Street in Colchester was built c. 1886. It is listed in the Colchester Village Historic District as the Retta Buell House. Could this be I. Loretta Tew, who in 1877 married Harley P. Buell, the druggist?
The house at 43 Waterside Lane in Clinton was long thought to have been built c. 1790 by Charles K. Rossiter, who actually lived in it later on. It was actually built c. 1805 by ship master Daniel Vail on land purchased by his son, Silas Vail, in 1804.
The formation of the Methodist Church in Bethel grew out of a religious revival in the 1830s. With churches in Danbury being too crowded, in 1837 Methodists in Bethel began meeting in a private home. In 1847-1848, the congregation erected their own hall on a site where a Masonic Hall would later be built. Work on the current Bethel United Methodist Church, located at 141 Greenwood Avenue, began in 1860 and the building was dedicated in August, 1861. It is a stylistically eclectic edifice that features a Greek Revival cornice and pilasters, Italianate round-arched windows, and a Gothic Revival tower. The church had to be restored after a fire in 1884. The steeple was also rebuilt after a lightning strike in 1971.
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