Museum - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

The Landers House (1910)

Landers, Frary & Clark, a New Britain company which manufactured cutlery, was founded in the 1850s by George M. Landers. The company (pdf) was known for such products as the Universal Food Chopper/Grinder. George M. Landers‘ son, Charles Smith Landers, married Grace Judd, the daughter of Loren F. Judd, of North & Judd, a company which manufactured saddlery hardware. Their son was also named George M. Landers. Grace Judd Landers later lived in a house which on Lexington Street in New Britain. It was built around 1910 for William H. Hart, president of Stanley Works, and sold to Mrs. Landers upon the death of Hart’s widow in 1929. It is located on the edge of Walnut Hill Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The style of the house combines elements of the Spanish Mission style (the use of stucco and stone and the Spanish style roofing tiles) and the Craftsman style (the gables and overhanging eaves with decorative brackets).

In 1935, Grace Judd Landers bequeathed the house to the the Art Museum of the New Britain Institute, now the New Britain Museum of American Art. The building was remodeled as an art museum based on designs by William F. Brooks, of the firm Davis & Brooks, and opened in 1937. In 2007, a new museum building was opened, connected to the Landers House, which has again been renovated and now houses an art lab, library and art studio.

Lyman Allyn Art Museum (1932)

In 1926, Harriet Upson Allyn founded a trust to establish a museum in New London in honor of her father, Capt. Lyman Allyn. The Lyman Allyn Art Museum‘s Neo-Classical building, designed by Charles A. Platt, opened in 1932. The museum also owns the Deshon-Allyn House.

The Shaw-Perkins Mansion (1756)

The Shaw-Perkins Mansion, on Blinman Street in New London, was built, beginning in 1756 for the wealthy merchant and shipowner, Capt. Nathaniel Shaw. The house, completed in 1758, was constructed by French Canadian builders, who used granite from the ledge behind the property. Nathaniel Shaw, Jr. inherited the house. He served as Naval Agent for Connecticut and the Mansion was a naval War office during the Revolutionary War. Nathan Hale was a visitor to the Mansion around 1775 and George Washington likely spent the night there in 1776. The house survived Benedict Arnold’s 1781 burning of New London, with only the kitchen being damaged. Shaw’s wife, Lucretia, died in 1781, after becoming ill from nursing prisoners and Shaw himself died the following year from a hunting accident. The house then passed to his brother, Thomas Shaw, and then to his sister, Lucretia Shaw Woodbridge and her husband, Judge Elias Perkins. The house was extensively remodeled by Dr. Nathaniel Shaw Perkins in 1845. His daughter, Jane Richards Perkins (1844-1930), sold the house and its contents to the New London County Historical Society in 1907, on condition she could reside there until her death. The house was restored and is open to the public as a museum.

Thomas Lee House (1660)

Built around 1660, the Thomas Lee House in Niantic is one of Connecticut’s oldest wood frame post-Medieval English houses. The original structure consisted of a single-room ground floor with a chamber above. This was expanded, after 1700, with the addition of a West Parlor and Chamber. The lean-to, which makes the house a saltbox, was added about 1765. The Lee family owned the house for two hundred years, until it was sold to a local farmer who used it as a barn and chicken coop. The farmer planned to tear the house down, but in 1914, it was saved by the East Lyme Historical Society, with help from the Connecticut Society of Colonial Wars, the Society of Colonial Dames, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and Lee family descendants. The house was restored under the direction of Norman Morrison Isham, an architectural historian and author of Early Connecticut Houses (1900). It opened to the public in 1915 as a historic house museum, operated by the East Lyme Historical Society.

Old Yale University Art Gallery (1927)

Historic Buildings of Connecticut’s fiftieth entry for New Haven is the old Yale University Art Gallery building, designed by Egerton Swartwout a Yale graduate, in a Gothic style called “Tuscan Romanesque.” Built along Chapel Street in 1927, the Art Gallery is connected to the earlier Street Hall (1864), across High Street, by a distinctive bridge. Swatwout planned a further extension of the building, but this original plan was not completed; instead the museum was expanded in 1953 with the construction of the modern-style new Art Gallery building, designed by Louis I. Kahn. Until recently, the bridge over High Street contained faculty offices, but it will soon be renovated, in the continuation of a Gallery plan which has already resulted in the restoration of the Kahn building. This work will expand the Art Gallery across the bridge and into Street Hall. (more…)

Heublein Tower (1914)

The 165-foot Heublein Tower, in Talcott Mountain State Park in Simsbury, is a very notable Connecticut landmark which provides spectacular views of Hartford and the Farmington River Valley. It was built as a residence for Gilbert Heublein, a food and drink magnate and manufacturer of A1 Steak Sauce, and was modeled on castles in his native Bavaria. In 1875, a young Heublein was hiking on the mountain with his fiancee and said, ”Someday Louise, I’m going to build you a castle on this mountain.” The Tower, constructed to withstand 100 MPH winds, was designed by Smith and Bassette and built by T. R. Fox and Son in 1914. The rest of the residence was added around 1925. The tower later opened to the public as part of the state park and many visitors hike up to visit it each year. There have been a number of restorations of the building, most recently through the efforts of the Friends of Heublein Tower.

The Nathaniel Hempsted House (1759)

The Nathaniel Hempsted House is a stone, gambrel-roofed house on Jay Street in New London. It was built in 1759 by Nathaniel Hempsted, the grandson of the diarist Joshua Hempsted, whose house is located just behind it. Like the William Coit House, the Nathaniel Hempsted House was once on the waterfront, before Bream Cove was filled in. The building was once known as the Old Huguenot House, because it was believed that Huguenots (French Protestants) helped to build it. Actually, it was Acadians (Catholic French Canadian refugees) who were more likely involved in the construction. The house was later sold out of the Hempsted family, but was eventually acquired by Connecticut Landmarks to join the adjacent Joshua Hempsted House as a museum.