Thomas Eldredge House (1842)

31 Gravel Street in Mystic

Thomas Eldredge, and his brothers George and Elam, purchased land on Gravel Street in Mystic from their father in 1842. Thomas erected the house at 31 Gravel Street soon after. The three brothers were all shipmasters and mariners. Thomas was a captain for over 45 years and was known as “the Commodore of the Mallory line.” He sold the house when he retired. He moved to New York and maintained a summer home in Mystic on Prospect Hill. After a fire in 1879 the house’s original roof was replaced with a Mansard roof.

Philo Bevin House (1872)

The Second Empire-style house at 26 Barton Hill Road in East Hampton was built in 1872 by Philo Bevin, who was born in 1813 in the William Bevin House across the street. Philo was one of four brothers who ran the Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company, which helped transform East Hampton into Belltown, USA and still manufactures bells today. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903)

A man of high moral principles, Mr. Bevin sought to promote every work calculated to advance the mental and moral condition of mankind, as well as to further the material welfare of his town and State. He was closely identified with the work of the local Congregational Church, in which he acted successively as clerk and treasurer. Being a stanch supporter of temperance principles, his life was an ideal one in the line of proper living. Politically he was a Whig in early life, and promptly joined the Republican party upon its organization. At one time he represented his town in the Legislature.

The house remained in the Bevin family until 1971. Alice Conklin Bevin (1893-1969), Philo’s granddaughter, occupied the house in the 1940s. She was a well-known artist who painted murals in the house’s third-floor bathroom and in the property’s barn, which she used as a studio. In 2015, new owner Dean Brown began a major restoration of the house into a bed & breakfast called The Bevin House.

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Henry B. Graves House (1858)

Henry Bennett Graves (1823-1891) was a lawyer in Litchfield who served several terms in the state General Assembly. He was also executive secretary to Governor Henry Dutton and he married the governor’s daughter, Mary Dutton. His second wife was Sarah Smith of Morris. In 1858 Graves built a Greek Revival house at 153 South Street in Litchfield. The house was sold to Cornelius M. Ray of Morris in 1865.  After his death, the house passed to his daughter, Clara Belle Ray.  The Ray family made alterations to the house, including the addition of the mansard roof and the south bay. Elizabeth Shields Hamlin bought the property in 1910. In the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society are blueprints for the building of a garage, an extension of the dining room, and other alterations to the house, made by Ross & McNeil, architects of New York. They were hired by Elizabeth’s husband, Elbert B. Hamlin in 1915. After her husband’s death in 1936, Elizabeth Hamlin sold the house in 1937.

Tibbals Brothers Store (1871)

At the corner of Depot Hill Road and Old Middletown Road in the village of Cobalt in East Hampton is a building erected as a store about 1871. The Mansard-roofed structure was built by three brothers, Russell E., James N. and Rufus D. Tibbals, whose family had owned a store in the area since the late 1840s. The new store, which also contained the Cobalt Post Office, may have been built to take advantage of the opening in 1873 of “The Air Line” railroad, which had a station in Cobalt. The Tibbals also owned factories that manufactured oakum (used for caulking wooden ships), a businesses started by their father, Thaddeus, in 1828. The brothers initially leased the store building to Charles A. Bailey and Francis Kinner, who sold groceries and dry goods. In the early twentieth century, the store was owned and operated by Arthur S. Bailey. After 1940, the building was converted from commercial use into a private residence.

Thomas Trowbridge House (1874)

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.

Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin House (1871)

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.