On the east bank of the Connecticut River at Haddam Neck is an impressive building built in 1813 by Dudley Brainerd as a house and store. It was a good location: facing Haddam Neck’s main dock at Rock Landing and with a shipyard to the south, sailing vessels would often stop. According to the chapter on Haddam Neck by Henry M. Selden, in the 1884 History of Middlesex County,
The pioneer merchant was Robert Clark. The next was Dudley Brainerd, who built the house now occupied by Captain Charles S. Russell, in the basement of which he had his store. This store was next managed by Selden Huntington one year, succeeded by Elias Selden and Colonel Theodore H. Arnold, under the firm name of Selden & Arnold, then by a Mr. L’Hommedieu, and in rotation by Lavater R. Selden, James S. Selden, Lucius E. Goff, Captain Charles S. Russell, Albert S. Russell, George E. Russell & Co, and Joseph Griffin.
Charles S. Russell bought the building in 1846 and by the 1870s he had converted it to become an inn, serving the steamboat passengers traveling between Hartford and New York City. It was at this time the building was updated, with a Second Empire-style mansard roof and an impressive ornamented three-level front porch. A later addition onto the first story has a granite foundation featuring round windows resembling portholes.