The building at 171 East Plymouth Road in East Plymouth was built c. 1840-1860 as a house and store by merchant Orrin Preston. The store, which also used space in the back of the old Scoville House next door at 175 East Plymouth Road, was in operation through the end of the nineteenth century.
Suggested dates for the construction of the house at 329 Wolcott Hill Road in Wethersfield have included 1734, 1754, 1764 and 1775. It is said that the nails used in building the house were made by prisoners at Old Newgate Prison. The house, which is named after Josiah Wolcott, has overhangs with dentil molding above both floors. Horace Wells, who pioneered the use of anesthesia (using nitrous oxide) in dentistry, lived in the house for a time in the 1840s [or is this a confusion with another Horace Wells (1789-1853), son of Thomas Wells?]. The Hart Seed Company began in this house in 1892 when Charles C. Hart started packaging seeds in the kitchen. In 1957 the house was purchased by Glenn Weaver, a professor of history at Trinity College who wrote a history of Hartford. His wife Emojean was a teacher at Wethersfield High School.
Greatly altered since its construction c. 1885, the house at 106 Prospect Place in Bristol is the work of builder-architect Joel T. Case. Now a multi-family home, it is listed in the nomination for the Federal Hill Historic District as the Harry L. Beach House. This is likely Henry L. Beach (1839-1922), who worked for his brother-in-law Edward Ingraham as superintendent at the E. Ingraham Clock Company.
The house at 58 Main Street in Newtown was built c. 1790 and is now the Honan Funeral Home. In 1912, the house was purchased by William A. Honan, Sr., who had just married Margaret Hayes of Sandy Hook. It was then a two-family house, with the Honan family residing in one half and renting the other half. Honan had established his undertaking business in 1903 and stored his embalming and funeral equipment in a garage and storage rooms behind the house. He tore down the garage in 1938 and erected a new building for his funeral home, with the business on the first floor and a rental apartment on the second floor. Honen died in 1966 and in 1969 his son, William Honan, Jr, moved the funeral home into the house at 58 Main Street. He made extensive renovations to the building and the new funeral home reopened in 1970. The current Funeral Director of the three-generation business is Daniel T. Honan.
An article last Spring (April 24, 2017) in the Newtown Bee [“New Owner Brings New Life To 40 Main Street,” by Kendra Bobowick] notes the recent renovation of an 1893 Queen Anne-style Victorian house. Around 1905, Charles H. Northrop, town treasurer, lived in the house. He was accused of embezzlement and hung himself in the house’s foyer. From 1910 into the 1920s, the house was used by the local telephone exchange. The house was used as a law office from the 1940s through 2001.
Known locally as the “Balcony House,” the residence at 34 Main Street in Newtown is located just south of Trinity Episcopal Church. The nomination for the Newtown Borough Historic District gives the mansard-roofed house a date of c. 1870, but the real estate websites (linked above) give a date of c. 1820. Perhaps it was built around 1820 and updated in the Second Empire style around 1870? Until his death in 1950, it was the home of Arthur Treat Nettleton, who became treasurer of the Newtown Savings Bank in 1898 and its president in 1938. The picture above was taken back in 2010, when it was painted in darker colors than at present.
The first St. Paul’s Church in Glastonbury was erected in 1903 at 40 Naubuc Avenue. Bishop Michael A. Tierney blessed the cornerstone on May 31, 1903 and the dedication ceremony took place on October 18. The previous year, the church had been made a mission of St. Augustine Parish, South Glastonbury. St. Paul’s was made a parish on September 23, 1954 and a new church, at 2577 Main Street, was dedicated on January 25, 1958. The former church on Naubuc Avenue became the Parish Hall. Today St Paul’s and St. Augustine’s parishes are joined in the Roman Catholic Community of Saints Isidore and Maria
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