Museum - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Capt. Nathaniel B. Palmer House (1852)

As a young sea captain in 1820, while searching for new seal rookeries south of Cape Horn, Nathaniel Brown Palmer became the first American to discover Antarctica. Palmer Land, on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Palmer Archipelago are named in his honor. Later, Palmer helped develop the clipper ship and became a successful ship owner. A biography of “Captain Nat”, titled Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, An Old-Time Sailor of the Sea, by John R. Spears, was published in 1922. An icebreaking research ship, named the Nathaniel B. Palmer, was launched in 1992. Palmer’s 1852 Italian Villa style mansion, located on Palmer Street in Stonington, overlooks the upper section of Stonington Harbor and is one of four stately homes built in the area of Lambert’s Cove in the 1850s. The house was acquired by the Stonington Historical Society in 1994 and is now open to visitors as a house museum.

East District School (1789)

The brick East District School in Norwich was built in 1789, on land donated to the town by Thomas Leffingwell IV. It was used for about 125 years and its students included Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who attended in 1795. The school was quite progressive, with boys and girls being taught the same subjects. Starting in 1891, the building was used by the School House Club for cultural and social events. Located on Washington Street, it is now a historical museum.

Denison Homestead (1717)

The Denison Homestead is the third successive house to be built on the land granted to Captain George Denison in 1654 in the Town of Stonington‘s half of Mystic (which is a census-designated place). Its immediate predecessor burned in a fire in 1717, the night before George Denison‘s grandson, known as “George the Builder,” was married. This grandson then built the current house just west of the original home, using charred timbers from the old house. The house, which became known as Pequotsepos Manor, continued to be the home of generations of the Denison family. In 1930, Ann Borodell Denison Gates created the Denison Society and after her death, in 1941, the house became the Denison Homestead Museum. Located on Pequotsepos Road in Mystic, the museum presents a different period of time the history of the Denison family in each of its rooms.

This is Historic Buildings of Connecticut’s 500th Post
(not including the April Fools Day post)

Stonington Harbor Lighthouse (1840)

Stonington’s first lighthouse was built in 1824, but after an 1838 inspection, it was found the building was deteriorating and had moved 25 feet due to erosion. Reusing stones from the first building, a new stone lighthouse, with a 35-foot tower, was built in 1840 by John Bishop further up Stonington Borough’s peninsula. This lighthouse served until 1889. By that time, a privately owned signal on Stonington’s newly constructed breakwater had proven to be more effective than the old lighthouse, so a new cast-iron Stonington Breakwater Light (replaced in 1926) was built. The earlier Harbor Light continued to be used as the new lighthouse keeper’s home until a house was built in 1908. In 1925, the old building was sold at auction and then donated to the Stonington Historical Society. Since 1927, the Stonington Harbor Lighthouse has been open to the public as the Old Lighthouse Museum, with exhibits about Stonington’s maritime history.

Pine Grove Schoolhouse (1865)

In Avon, on Route 167 (West Avon Road) is a Gothic Revival-style one room school house which served students from 1865 to 1949. Built in 1865 as Avon‘s School Number 7, it was renamed the Pine Grove School in 1927. After 1949, it served as a branch library and a nursery school, eventually being restored by the Avon Historical Society in 1975 and opened as a museum representing an early twentieth century school.

The Bradley Barnes Museum (1836)

What is now the Bradley Barnes Museum, on Main Street in Southington, began as a Greek Revival style hose, built in 1836 for Amon Bradley, the same year he married Sylvia Barnes. Bradley, who had been a Yankee peddler in the south in his youth, invested in real estate and served as postmaster and in the Connecticut General Assembly. The Barnes Homestead remained in the family for three generations and had many additions and expansions, including the c. 1860 attic windows and the c. 1900 Colonial Revival porch. Bradley Henry Barnes, Amon’s grandson, was a successful manufacturer and financier. In 1973, he bequeathed the house and its contents to the town of Southington to be a museum. Numerous antiques were collected by the Barnes family over the years and are on display in the Bradley Barnes Museum, which is located not far from the Southington Green.

Christopher Leffingwell House (1675)

The oldest section of the Leffingwell House, on Washington Street in Norwich, dates to 1675 and was built by Steven Backus. Sometime later, the house was sold by Backus to Ensign Thomas Leffingwell, son of Lt. Thomas Leffingwell, who had given assistance to the Mohegan Chief Uncas in 1645, when he brought supplies at time when Uncas was under siege by the Narragansett. Leffingwell converted the building for use as a tavern in 1701, adding more rooms. The house is now named for his descendant, Christopher Leffingwell, who later inherited the tavern. He was a merchant and entrepreneur, who eventually built several mills. During the Revolutionary War, Leffingwell was a deputy commissary to the Continental Army and George Washington occasionally stayed at the Leffingwell Inn. In 1957, the house was moved to its present location when a connector was built linking Washington and Town Streets. Today, the Leffingwell House Museum is open to the public and operated by the Society of the Founders of Norwich.