Museum - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Thankful Arnold House (1794)

The Thankful Arnold House, on Hayden Hill Road in Haddam, was built in three stages between 1794 and 1810. The first section, built in 1794-1795 by Linus Parmalee, was a small house, with a shop on the first floor. The mortgaged house was foreclosed in 1797 and sold to Joseph Arnold, a merchant who had his shop in the basement. In 1800, the second section was built adding two bays to the western end of the house. The third section to be added, in 1810, was an extension to the rear, making the gambrel-roofed house have a saltbox profile. The two-story ell on the west side, which was originally a separate mid-eighteenth century building, was also added at this time. Joseph Arnold died in 1823 and his widow, Thankful Clark Arnold, continued to live in the house, which was known as the Widow Arnold House, until her death in 1849. It was occupied by Arnold descendants until it was purchased in 1963 by one who lived in Texas, Isaac Arnold, who died in 1973, leaving the house to the Haddam Historical Society. By that time, the house had already been restored to its 1810 appearance and opened to the public as a museum in 1965.

Gillette Castle (1919)

Gillette Castle was built by the actor and playwright William Gillette. Born in Hartford in 1853, William Hooker Gillette was the son of Senator Francis Gillette and the nephew of John Hooker and Isabella Beecher Hooker. He grew up in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood and made his debut in Mark Twain‘s Gilded Age in 1877. Gillette became most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the stage. He also wrote plays and a work of theory celled The Illusion of the First Time in Acting (1915). Gillette built his castle, in East Haddam, on the southernmost hill of a chain called the Seven Sisters. Modeled on the ruins of Medieval German fortress on the Rhine, Gillette’s Castle was built between 1914 and 1919 of local fieldstone supported by a steel framework. He supervised the construction of the distinctive building, which was surrounded by Gillette‘s eighty-four acre estate on the Connecticut River. He also had his own steam train. Gillette, who died in 1937, stated in his will that he did not want his property to going to “some blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.” The home and estate was purchased by the State in 1943 to become the Gillette Castle State Park. Recently restored, the castle is open to the public for tours.

The Hitchcock-Phillips House (1785)

The Hitchcock-Phillips House, on Church Drive in Cheshire, dates to 1785. The Georgian-style house was built by Rufus Hitchcock, a merchant and leading citizen of Cheshire. A wing was added to the house around 1820 by Hitchcock’s son, William Rufus Hitchcock, who lived there until 1834. The house was next occupied by his sister, Lucretia and her husband, Rev. Peter Clark. Their daughter married A.W. Phillips, a Cheshire Academy instructor and later a Yale professor. They used the house as a summer home until 1907. The three dormer windows were added in 1925. The house was later used by Cheshire Academy as a dorm and was purchased by the town in 1972 to become the museum of the Cheshire Historical Society.

Weed-Enders House (1790)

One of the four historic properties owned by the Salmon Brook Historical Society is the Weed-Enders House. The house was originally constructed in 1790, six miles to the west of its present location, by Moses Weed. It was then owned by members of the Weed family and then other families, until it was acquired in 1924 by John Enders, who used it as a hunting lodge. In 1974, after the Enders State Forest was established, the house was moved to be adjacent to the Abijah Rowe House. It is now part of the Samon Brook Historical Society’s museum.

Nehemiah Royce House (1672)

The oldest house in Wallingford is the Nehemiah Royce House on North Main Street. Nehemiah Royce (who died in 1706) and his first wife Hannah, were among the first settlers of Wallingford. Royce‘s saltbox house was built in 1672. The house is also known as the Washington Elm House because it used to be next to the Washington Elm: in 1775, when George Washington was on his way to take command of the Continental Army in Massachusetts, he stopped in Wallingford to purchase gunpowder and addressed the people of the town in front of the house near the Elm. The house was moved to its present location in 1924. For a time it was a museum and then was used as a residence by Choate Rosemary Hall, until donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust in the 1990s.

Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion (1866)

The Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion, on South Main Street in Wallingford, was built in 1866. By the late twentieth century, it was being used for offices and had lost most of its nineteenth century Italianate decorative features. In 1999, the Johnson Mansion was donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust to become the new home for the now closed Meriden American Silver Museum. Both Meriden and Wallingford were centers for silver manufacturing. The house is now being restored.

Abijah Rowe House (1732)

The town of Granby began as a settlement called Salmon Brook, which eventually separated from Simsbury. The Abijah Rowe House, built around 1732, is the oldest surviving building from the original settlement. It was built by Nehemiah Lee, who sold it to his son-in-law, Peter Rowe, in 1750. Three years later it was acquired by Peter’s brother, Abijah Rowe. Both brothers were blacksmiths and may have produced some of the house’s hardware. Rowe died in 1812 and the following year his heirs sold the house to Elijah and Joseph Smith. In 1903, it was sold by the Smith family to Fred M. Colton, a tobacco grower, whose daughters, Mildred Colton Allison and Carolyn Colton Avery, gave the house to the Salmon Brook Historical Society in 1966. It is now part of a campus of four historic structures open to the public.