In 2013, Ralph Nader purchased the former Winsted Savings Bank building at 654 Main Street in Winsted to become the future home of the American Museum of Tort Law, which he first announced was in development in 1998. The museum, which opened in 2015, has a mission to inform and inspire Americans about trial by jury and the benefits of tort law (the law of wrongful injuries). The museum‘s building was erected in 1925 by the Winsted Savings Bank, which was incorporated in 1860. From 1867 until 1925 the bank had occupied the 1851 building at 690 Main Street that had originally been erected by the Winsted Bank.
One of the many buildings on the grounds of Mystic Seaport is the Edmondson House, which now serves as the Children’s Museum. The house was built in the 1850s-1860 as a residence for John Edmondson (1803-1875), a textile worker and shipyard foreman. He married Catherine Greenman (1803-1882), a sister of the three Greenman brothers whose former shipyard is now the site of Mystic Seaport. After the Seaport acquired the house in 1942, the building became the Pugsley Clock Shop, an exhibition space for clocks, watches and navigational instruments. It is now the Children’s Museum, which had previously been located in a former work shop and tool shed dating to 1841.
On the Fenton River, near the village of Gurleyville in the town of Mansfield is a historic stone gristmill. Built in the 1830s of local stone, including garnetiferous schist, gneiss, granite, pegmatite and quartzite, it replaced the original mill on the site, built in 1749 by Benjamin Davis, who had also constructed a dam. Samuel Cross, father of Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross, was the miller for many years in the nineteenth century. The mill was run by the Douda family from 1912 until it ceased operation in 1941. An attached sawmill, in operation since 1723, was destroyed by heavy snow in the early 1950s. The surviving gristmill has complete and perfectly preserved equipment from when it was last used. The Joshua’s Tract Conservation and Historic Trust (AKA Joshua’s Trust) purchased the property in 1979 and the Gurleyville Grist Mill is open to the public on a seasonal basis.
In the early nineteenth century, town meetings in Pomfret were held in churches and other borrowed buildings. In the 1830s there was a movement to build a permanent town hall, but the citizens disputed where to locate the building. Eventually a council was formed to select the location. To ensure neutrality, the council of three was composed of individuals who were not members of the Pomfret community, being chosen from the neighboring towns of Hampton, Thompson, and Killingly. The spot chosen was roughly midway between the town’s two larger villages of Abington and Pomfret Center. Erected in 1841 (at what is now 17 Town House Road), the new building would serve as Town House for many years and is now owned by the Pomfret Historical Society.
David Miles Hotchkiss (1787-1878) was an educator, civic leader, and abolitionist in the town of Prospect. In 1819-1820, his father, Frederick Hotchkiss, had erected a farmhouse for him at 61 Waterbury Road for a total cost of $660.99. David Hotchkiss operated a boarding school, called the Select Academy, on the house’s second floor. A member of the committee that named the town Prospect (for its high elevation) when it was incorporated in 1827 (the town was formed from the neighboring towns of Waterbury and Cheshire), Hotchkiss then served as a town selectman and in the state legislature. An abolitionist, he contributed to the creation of the Free Soil Party in Connecticut in 1848. The house was inherited by his tenth child, David Bryant Hotchkiss (1853-1903). The building was altered and enlarged over the years, with changes that included the replacement of the original large center chimney with a smaller one in the 1870s. At that same time the original front door was removed, but it was reused in the ell attached to the rear of the house. Three of David Bryant’s children, his son Treat (1888-1957) and two daughters, Ruth (1885-1978) and Mabel (1882-1966), never married and lived in the house until their deaths. The siblings left the house and surrounding property, which includes the Hotchkiss Farm, to their nieces, Nellie and Ruth Cowdell, who then sold it to the town of Prospect in 1980. Upon their deaths, the town received a bequest from the sisters towards the maintenance of the house, which is now the headquarters of the Prospect Historical Society.
Located at the intersection of Platt Hill and Taylor Brook Roads in Winchester is a one-room schoolhouse built in 1815 to replace an earlier one on the same site that had burned down in the 1790s. The new building, Winchester’s District No. 8 schoolhouse, was heated by a fireplace until a box stove was installed in the 1830s. The schoolhouse was in use until it closed in 1908. It then remained abandoned for the next eight years. In 1916, William H. Hall, a historian for whom Hall High School in West Hartford is named, expressed his concern for the neglected building in an article Winsted Evening Citizen. This inspired Clifford Bristol to buy and repair the building. Bristol had been a student at the school about 1870 and his father, Charles A. Bristol, had been a teacher there. In June of 1916, Bristol held a reunion in the school of former teachers and students. In 1923 another meeting was held in the building which formed the Little Red Schoolhouse Association, dedicated to preserving the historic building. The organization’s membership had dwindled by the early 2000s, but in recent years there has been renewed interest and fundraising efforts to allow restoration of the building to its original condition. The restored schoolhouse reopened to the public in 2018. Other Connecticut buildings called “The Little Red Schoolhouse” can be found in North Branford (built 1805) and Wethersfield (built 1869).Bristol held a reunion in the school of former teachers and students. In 1923 another meeting was held in the building which formed the Little Red Schoolhouse Association, dedicated to preserving the historic building. The organization’s membership had dwindled by the early 2000s, but in recent years there has been renewed interest and fundraising efforts to allow restoration of the building to its original condition. The restored schoolhouse reopened to the public in 2018.
At 40 Main Street in Bethel is a building known as the Second Meeting House. It was built in 1842 and was indeed the second meeting house to be erected by the First Congregational Church of Bethel. The first meeting house, built in 1760, had burned down. In 1865, a strong wind blew down the second meeting house’s steeple, which fell through the roof of the building. As related in James Montgomery Bailey’s History of Danbury (1896): “In the spring of 1865, during a gale, the house was injured by the falling of the spire, and having been repaired, was sold to the town and moved ten rods west of its former site.” In 1866, the church erected its third and current meeting house, located at 46 Main Street, where the first meeting house had once stood. After being sold to the town, the Second Meeting House served as Town Hall until 1939. Today, the building is the headquarters of the Bethel Historical Society, which rents out the hall. It is also the meeting place of Bethel VFW Post 935.
You must be logged in to post a comment.