Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Museum

Governor Jonathan Trumbull House (1735)

Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s last colonial governor and first state governor (1769-1784), was born in Lebanon in 1710. Educated at Harvard, Trumbull began working with his father, Joseph Trumbull, as a merchant in 1731. He became a delegate to Connecticut’s General Assembly in the 1730s and his later support of the Patriot cause led to his election as deputy governor in 1766, with the support of the Sons of Liberty. He became governor in 1769, after the death of governor William Pitkin. Trumbull was the only colonial governor to support the American Revolution, organizing Connecticut’s resources to serve the war effort and earning the praise of George Washington. Among the children of Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., who died in 1785, were Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. (a later governor of Connecticut) and the artist, John Trumbull.

The Governor Jonathan Trumbull House was built by his father, Joseph, between 1735 and 1740, and was inherited by Jonathan Trumbull in 1755, who enlarged and remodeled it in the fashionable Georgian style. The building is architecturally notable as the state’s only central chimney house with a center hall. It was also moved slightly north of its first location in 1824. The house has been owned and operated as a house museum since 1935 by the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution.

Wood Memorial Library (1928)

Donated by William Wood, of South Windsor, in honor of his parents, Dr. William Wood (a distinguished ornithologist) and Mary Ellsworth Wood, the Wood Memorial Library, on Main Street, served as the one of town’s two libraries from its dedication, in 1928, into the 1970s, when a new library building was constructed on Sullivan Avenue. In 1971, the non-profit Friends of Wood Memorial Library was founded to oversee its continued operation, through private funds, as a library, museum and historical archive. The library, built between 1926 and 1928, was designed by the Hartford architect William Marchant in the Colonial Revival style, with features drawn from the Federal period.

Phelps Tavern (1776)

Located on Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, the Capt. Elisha Phelps House served as a tavern run by successive generations of the Phelps family. According to Wikipedia, it was built by Capt. Phelps in 1776, although the Simsbury Historical Society site indicates it was built sometime earlier, purchased by Phelps and raised by him, adding a new first floor, around 1771. Phelps and his brother, Noah Phelps, were involved in gathering intelligence during the Revolutionary War campaign to capture Fort Ticonderoga. In 1962, the house was purchased by the Simsbury Historical Society from the last of the Phelps family members to live there. It can now be visited as the Phelps Tavern Museum, part of a campus of historical buildings moved to the site by the Historical Society.

Mark Twain Carriage House (1874)

Adjacent to the Mark Twain House in Hartford is the Clemens family’s Carriage House, also built in 1874. Like the High Victorian Gothic Twain House, designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, the Carriage House features architectural details in the Stick style. In the second floor rooms, above where the horses and carriages were kept, Mark Twain’s coachman, Patrick McAleer, lived with his wife and seven children. McAleer served Mark Twain in various homes he lived in, from 1870-1891 and 1905-1906.

Chamberlin Carriage House (1871)

Franklin Chamberlin was a Hartford lawyer who was also involved in the development of the city’s Nook Farm neighborhood in the nineteenth century. Probably as an investment, he built the house on Forrest Street in 1871 that was purchased by Harriet Beecher Stowe two years later. Around the same time, he sold the adjacent land nearby to Mark Twain to build his house. Finally, in 1884, Chamberlin built as his residence the house on Forrest Street, now known as the Katharine Seymour Day House. Earlier, in 1871, Chamberlin built the carriage house, adjacent to the Stowe and Day houses, that is now used as the Visitor Center of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. On the east elevation of the building, Chamberlin’s initials, are carved in brownstone above the side entrance. (more…)

Miles Lewis House (1801)

Miles Lewis built in 1801-1802 for his new wife, Isabinda Peck Lewis, on Maple Street in Bristol, is now the home of the American Clock and Watch Museum. Lewis was the son of Abel Lewis, who owned the Lewis Tavern. While Miles Lewis and his wife had no children, a niece of Isabinda came to live with them, and Peck descendants lived in the house until 1952. The next year it was bought by the Bristol Clock Museum. In 1956, a new wing was added to the museum, constructed with wood paneling saved from the 1728 house of Ebenezer Barnes.

Cheney School (1859)

The Cheney School house of 1859 was originally located on a hill, west of Pine Street and north of Cooper Hill Street, in Manchester. In 1914, it was moved to its current location, on Cedar Street, by the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company to make room for a new dye house. Over the years, the building has served as a day care center, storage space and a children’s museum. In 1985, it became the Museum of Local History, now known as the Old Manchester Museum, managed by the Manchester Historical Society. Another notable schoolhouse nearby is the 1975 replica of the original 1751 one-room Keeney Schoolhouse, located on the grounds of the Cheney Homestead.