This is the thousandth post at Historical Buildings of Connecticut! To celebrate, you may have noticed the new poll at the top of the sidebar. Please vote!!! Today’s building is the William G. Peck House, which is on North Street in Litchfield and was built in 1867. William Guy Peck was born in Litchfield in 1820, graduated from West Point (pdf, p. 81) in 1844 and served in the corps of Topographical Engineers. He later taught mathematics at West Point and later at Columbia College, where he also taught engineering and led the Department of Mechanics in the School of Mines. He married a daughter of the mathematician, Charles Davies. According to an 1892 obituary:
He was the author of numerous works, including a mathematical dictionary, and text-books in arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, determinants, mechanics, physics, and astronomy. His works are characterized by lucidity, conciseness and directness. His teaching was distinguished by the same excellent qualities. His full and exact knowledge of the subjects which he taught, his clear exposition and illustration of them, his enthusiasm, his solicitude for the advancement and welfare of the students, the humor with which he occasionally illumined his lectures, made his room an attractive one, and his courses sought after and enjoyed. It is within the personal knowledge of very many, perhaps the most, of those by whom this notice will be read, that no professor in the college was more beloved than he.