Masons - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Fourth District School/Masonic Hall, North Haven (1880)

The building at 30 Church Street in North Haven was built in 1887-1890 as the town’s Fourth District School. The lead-up to its erection was long delayed, as described by Sheldon B. Thorpe in his North Haven Annals (1892):

This district more frequently named the “Centre District,” has probably always had a larger enumeration of children than any in the town and less room, per capita, to educate them in. In 1872 the proposition to furnish a larger school building was brought forward but voted down. The next year the Board of Education, seeing the need, declared to the district that unless better facilities were provided, its proportion of the public fund would be suspended. This alarmed the obstructionists and their opposition was temporarily withdrawn. A new school site was purchased and proposals to build were invited, but it was impossible to get any farther. For nearly six years, delays of one nature and another were put forward and the lot remained unbuilt upon. The death of Capt. H. H. Stiles, in 1879, a member of the special building committee, rendered a re-adjustment of matters necessary, and the district voted to sell the new site at public auction, November 4, 1879. Its Cost at the time of sale had reached in round numbers, $500. It brought $157.

To appease the Board of Education and compromise with the more radical ones of the district, new furniture was placed in the old building and a tax laid to cancel the debt.

The population was increasing, and in 1884 the project to build came up a second time. It was defeated. It was defeated also in 1885 and 1886. In 1887 it came up again as usual, and in this year secured a recognition. A committee was chosen to more fully inquire into the persistency of the petitioners, and the former unanimously reported insufficient accommodations, and recommended a change of base. The report was adopted, and after a thorough examination the present location was decided upon and purchased in August 1887. It was identically the same tract as bought in 1873, with the addition of a frontage on Pierpont Park, where once stood the ancient Sabbath day houses, and later several sections of horse sheds.

The building was designed by North Haven’s prominent builder Solomon F. Linsley. The two rooms on the first floor were completed and ready for use in 1888 and a third room on the upper floor was fitted up in 1890. The fourth room remained unfinished at the time Thorpe was writing. Thrope goes on to write that

The practical working of the building has been found excellent in all respects. It is equipped with a finished basement, well, slate black-boards, bell, flag, modern furniture, and a local library. The course of study ranges from the kindergarten to that preparatory to entrance to the high school. It receives many pupils from other parts of the town, and is by far a more commodious and better equipped building than the average country town offers.

Today the building is a Masonic Hall, home to Corinthian Lodge #103, which was established in 1868. Corinthian #103’s first Lodge was located in the Northford section of North Branford. After a fire in 1879 Corinthian #103 moved into Totoket Hall in North Branford and in 1917 to Linsley Hall in North Haven. After the Town Fire Marshall ordered Linsley Hall closed because of fire hazard in 1945, the Lodge acquired and renovated the old District No. 4 School, which was dedicated as the new Lodge on November 1, 1947.

Many of the building’s decorative features and many of its windows have been removed over the years.

Temple B’Nai Israel (1929)

The former Temple B’Nai Israel at 265 West Main Street in New Britain was built in 1927-1929 as a Masonic Temple. It was designed by architect Walter P. Crabtree. The Masons sold the building to the Jewish congregation Aheyu B’Nai Israel (Brethren Sons of Israel) in 1940. Aheyu B’Nai Israel was organized in 1889 as an Orthodox congregation, but reorganized as Conservative in 1924. Members who held to Orthodox views split off and built Tephereth Israel Synagogue. Temple B’Nai Israel closed in the summer of 2007. Its Torah scrolls were transferred to the Hillel organizations at Trinity College, the University of Hartford, and the University of Connecticut

Captain William Johnson House (1790)

The Gambrel-roofed cape-style house at 29 Joshuatown Road at Hamburg Bridge in Lyme is architecturally distinguished. It is the only surviving example in the state of a distinctive type of chimney vaulting: an arched passage through a split chimney, with an elaborate doorway surround at the back of the passage. The house was built c. 1790-1803 by Captain William Johnson. He was a mason and the second floor has a large arch-ceilinged room that was used as a Masonic Hall. Captain Johnson died in 1818 and widow Mitty soon sold the house, although she returned to Hamburg Bridge in 1848 and bought another house on Joshuatown Road.

Mattatuck Museum (1986)

The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury was first established in 1877 as the Mattatuck Historical Society. Initially dedicated to preserving the history of Waterbury and its surrounding towns, the Museum‘s mission later expanded its focus to include the work of Connecticut artists. From 1912 to 1987, the Museum was located in the John Kendrick House on West Main Street. It then moved into a former Masonic Temple, located at 160 West Main Street. Built in 1912, the steel-framed Temple, with a facade of brick and limestone, was designed by Waterbury architect W.E. Griggs. The Museum’s new home comprised two distinct structures, meeting at a right angle: the West Main Street building and the Park Place auditorium building. Located between the two wings of this “L” was a former service station (144 West Main Street), built c. 1930, that had a modern retail front added in 1966. This structure was replaced, in 1986, by the Museum’s new entrance and courtyard garden, designed by renowned architect César Pelli, who also renovated the interior of the 1912 building. The materials of the new addition match the brick and limestone of the original building, while the new main entrance has a copper crown, indicating the Museum’s public function. (more…)

David Brainerd House (1874)

The Mansard-roofed house at 127 Pearl Street in Thompsonville, Enfield, was built c. 1874-1880 for David Brainerd. As recorded in The Genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard Family in America (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard, David Brainerd

was registrar of voters, notary public and justice of the peace, collector of taxes, and represented the town of Enfield in the state legislature in 1862. He was appointed assistant assessor of internal revenue in the first congressional district by Abraham Lincoln, in 1862, a position he held for nine successive years. He has always been active in politics and is a Republican and ready to aid in all advancement for improvements in town, school or church. He has been Elder in the First Presbyterian Church in Thompsonville, Conn., where he resided, and is honored for his sterling worth and noble character.

David Brainerd married Caroline King in 1844. After her death in 1859, he married his first wife’s sister, Henrietta King, who died in 1901. One of his sons, Horace, worked with his father in his agricultural warehouse business, then became purchasing agent for the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, and later was manager of the Overbrook Carpet Company. In 1932, the house was acquired by the Masons, who converted for use by a Masonic Lodge and added a ballroom. In 2007, the house was purchased by Enfield Pearl Ballroom & Dance Studio. It was renovated to have four apartments and a ballroom studio, called the North American Dance Academy, which has two dance floors.

Masonic Temple, Manchester (1927)

The home of Manchester’s Masonic Lodge No. 73 AF & AM is at 25 East Center Street. Lodge #73 was chartered in 1826 and met in various places over the years before the Masonic Temple was built. These included the the upper floor of a two room school-house at Manchester Green (until 1855, except for a period of anti-Masonic sentiment, when the Lodge met at the home of John Mather, the first elected Worshipful Master of Manchester, from 1827 to 1844), the Center Academy building (1855-1875 and 1886-1913), the Spencer Block (1875-1885), Cheney Hall (1886) and lastly the Odd Fellows Building. The corner stone of the current temple was laid on October 2, 1926 at a ceremony which was combined with the observance of the 100th Anniversary of the establishment of the lodge. The Temple was dedicated on October 8, 1927. The Temple is also the home of Friendship Tuscan Lodge No. 145 A.F. & A.M.

Fuller’s Tavern (1769)

George Washington recorded in his diary on November 10, 1789:

Left Hartford about 7 o’clock, and took the middle road (instead of the one through Middletown, which I went).— Breakfasted at Worthington, in the township of Berlin, at the house of one Fuller.

The tavern that Washington writes about still stands today at 1055 Worthington Ridge in Berlin. It was built circa 1769 and has later nineteenth century alterations. Ephraim Fuller, listed in the 1790 census, was probably the Fuller who ran the tavern. Additional details about the tavern are recorded in Catharine M. North‘s History of Berlin (1916):

Some years since, when the house was repainted, the date 1769 was discovered on the brick work of the chimney, about half-way between the roof and the top of the chimney. It was built to be used as a tavern with a public hall and ballroom on the second floor. […] Amos Kirby assumed the proprietorship of Fuller’s tavern about the year 1814, and lived on the place until his death in 1846 at the age of seventy-one. During the latter part of his years he carried on the business of a butcher and peddled meat about the town.

Around 1884, when wallpaper was being removed from the Tavern’s east room on the second floor, a mural displaying Masonic symbols was uncovered. The room had once been part of the ballroom, which once ran across the entire house from east to west and was later converted into a Masonic Lodge room. It is thought to have been the meeting place of Berlin Lodge, No. 20, organized in 1791, which later became Harmony Lodge No. 20 of New Britain and merged with Friendship Lodge No. 33 of Southington in 1995.