Old Stone Schoolhouse, Wolcott (1825)

The Old Stone Schoolhouse (pdf) is located at 155 Nichols Road in Wolcott. An extension was added to the building in 1898, which was attached to a frame woodshed (built in 1882) to form a new wing. At the time the addition was made, the date 1825 was inscribed in the school’s front gable, although the oldest part of the building may date back to 1821. In either case, the building is recognized as the oldest stone schoolhouse in Connecticut. Built as the town’s Southwest District school, it was in continuous use until 1930, when a new school was built. It was then purchased by Emily Morris of New Haven, whose grandfather, Lucius Tuttle, had taught at the school in 1829. In 1937, she gave it to the Mattatuck Historical Society of Waterbury and in 1963 it was purchased by the Wolcott Historical Society and is used as a museum of the town’s history.

Nathaniel Backus House (1750)

The Nathaniel Backus House, at 44 Rockwell Street in Norwich, was built as a Colonial era house in 1750, but is notable for its later Federal-style detailing. The house is named for Nathaniel Backus, Jr., who married Hannah Baldwin in 1726. Backus was one of only six men in Norwich who owned their own carriages in the years before the Revolutionary War. The house originally stood on lower Broadway. In 1951, it was saved from demolition and moved to Rockwell Street by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Together with the neighboring Perkins-Rockwell House, the Backus House is operated as a museum by the DAR.

Naugatuck Railroad Station (1910)

The railroad came to Naugatuck in 1849 and by the turn-of-the-century the lines through town were owned by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. When the time came to design a new and larger railway station, John H. Whittemore, Naugatuck’s great manufacturer and philanthropist, who had done so much to shape the architecture of the town center according to his vision of a “City Beautiful,” offered to help pay for its construction if he could select the building’s architect. Whittemore, who was also director of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, commissioned Henry Bacon to design the station, which was constructed between 1908 and 1910. The style of the building has been described as Spanish Colonial Revival, but also as Italian Villa style. Although trains still stop at a newer station nearby, the old station closed in the mid-1960s. Used for a time as a newspaper plant by the Naugatuck Daily News, the building has more recently been restored and converted into a museum by the Naugatuck Historical Society.

Squire’s Tavern (1796)

In 1796, Daniel Bennett of Weston built the house in Barkhamsted that would later be called Squire’s Tavern. From 1801 to 1821, it was operated as a tavern by Saul Upson, who then sold it to Bela Squire. The property had a farm, tavern, and blacksmith’s shop. The house had other owners after 1871, including Johann Ullmann, a German immigrant farmer. In 1929, the former Tavern was donated to the state and housed park rangers as part of People’s State Forest. By the 1990s, the building was unoccupied. It has since been restored and opened as a museum by the Barkhamsted Historical Society.

Trap Falls Schoolhouse (1872)

The Trap Falls School is a former one-room schoolhouse located at the Shelton History Center complex. Built in 1872, it originally stood at the corner of Huntington Street and Trap Fall Road in Shelton. It was later acquired by the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, which constructed the nearby Trap Falls Reservoir and used the school building as a storage shed. The company donated it to the Shelton Historical Society in 1971.

Avery-Copp House (1800)

The Avery-Copp House, at 154 Thames Street in Groton, was built around 1800 by Rufus Avery for his two sons and their families. It was later owned by a cousin, Latham Avery, and then was inherited by his daughter, Mary Jane Avery Ramsdell. The house was Victorianized in the Italianate style around 1870. It passed to Ramsdell’s niece, Betsey Avery Copp and her husband, Belton Copp, in 1895. Their son, Joe Copp, kept the house virtually unchanged after his parents died, preserving it as it had been before 1930. After his death in 1991, at the age of 101, his nieces and nephews sought to make the house a museum. After a period of ownership by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, during which restoration work began on the house, it became an independant museum and opened to the public for tours in 2006.