At 361 Barnum Avenue in East Bridgeport is a Second Empire-style house, built in 1868 for Claudius R. Hayward, who was a real estate developer and a contractor for the Wheeler & Wilson Company, manufacturers of sewing machines. The house’s architect was Abram Skaats, who designed many houses for the wealthy of Bridgeport in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
The mansard-roofed Second Empire double house at 269-271 Barnum Street in East Bridgeport was originally occupied by John Wessels, a grocer, and Chauncey Morton, a contractor. The house is one of many in East Bridgeport designed by architect Abram Skaats.
The mid-nineteenth century house at 736 Palisado Avenue in Windsor is a good example of the French Second Empire style, including a mansard roof. The exact date of construction (perhaps around 1865?) and the original owner of the house are unknown; the earliest known owner is John Kelley in 1885.
Jacob Arbus was a furrier in Rockville. In 1886 he established his own store, doing business at various locations until 1893, when he had a Mansard-roofed building constructed at 74 Union Street to serve as his store and residence. On an 1895 Bird’s-eye view of Rockville, the Arbus Block is listed as “63. Jacob Arbus, Furrier, Hats, Caps and Gents Furnishing Goods.”
The house of Dr. Frederick Gilnack, at 19 Elm Street in Rockville (Vernon), constructed in 1890, is a quite late example of a Second Empire house. The mansard roof had been popular some decades before, but the house’s Eastlake style ornamentation places the it stylistically in the later nineteenth century. Dr. Gilnack was born in Saxony in Germany in 1844. His family came to America when he was ten and settled in Glastonbury. He was honored by Dr. Eli P. Flint in Proceedings of the Connecticut State Medical Society (1917), who gave an account of his life:
He was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the School of Medicine of Columbia University, New York, March 14, 1867, and only three months later, in June, he located in Rockville, Connecticut, for the practice of his profession, which he continued there successfully, for forty-five years, until failing health obliged him to give it up.
He was especially successful as an obstetrician, and the loss of sleep and other exacting requirements which that class of practice necessitates, so lowered his vitality mentally and physically that he became unable to perform the duties of his profession for fiveyears, until an attack of epidemic influenza proved quickly fatal [in 1917].
At 50 Main Street in Newtown is an 1869 mansard-roofed Second Empire-style house built in 1869 for Henry Beers Glover. He was a successful businessman and, in 1855, he became one of the founders of the Newtown Savings Bank, serving as the bank’s treasurer until his death in 1870, just after the completion of his house. Glover was on the building committee for Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown and his house may have been designed by Silas N. Beers, a surveyor and mapmaker who was the architect of Trinity Church. Glover’s daughter, Mary B. Glover, married William J. Beecher, an attorney, who later had his office in the Glover House, where they lived. Their daughter, Florence Beecher, married Stephen E. Budd around 1918. After her husband’s death, she continued to live in the Glover House, which became known as the Budd House, until she died in 1977. (more…)
The Meriden Britannia Company was established in 1852. It produced the durable Britannia ware, which by the 1850s had replaced pewter in most American homes. Isaac C. Lewis was president of the company for fourteen years and served as mayor of Meriden from 1870 to 1872. Lewis built a mansion at 189 East Main Street in 1868. In 1950, the house was purchased by the Polish League of American Veterans and was used as a funeral home from 1998 to 2006. The house has since been vacant.
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