White Hall, Institute of Living (1877)

White Hall, part of the campus of the Retreat for the Insane (now the Institute of Living), was built in 1877 and was designed by George Keller, who also drew up plans for a number of other buildings at the Retreat, including Elizabeth Chapel. White Hall was originally constructed as a service building, used as a laundry, carpentry shop, vegetable cellar and coal storage vault. Later housing a swimming pool and squash courts, the building was vacant for a time until its recent restoration. It is now the home of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center.

Charter Oak Cultural Center (1876)

Connecticut's first synagogue was built for Congregation Beth Israel, on Charter Oak Avenue in Hartford in 1876. The congregation's earlier home, a former Baptist church on Main Street, was being razed for the building of the Cheney Block. Departing from his usual Gothic style, the architect of Temple Beth Israel, George Keller, utilized the Romanesque Revival style in his design. In 1898, with the congregation growing, the building was enlarged and renovated. The the width of the nave was altered to match the towers and the interior was elaborately stenciled. In 1936, the congregation moved to a new building in West Hartford. Today, the original Temple Beth Israel has been restored and serves as the non-sectarian Charter Oak Cultural Center.

Eizabeth Chapel, Institute of Living (1875)

Located on the grounds of the Institute of Living in Hartford (which had begun as the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane, founded by Dr. Eli Todd), Elizabeth Chapel was donated by Dr. Gurdon Wadsworth Russell in memory of his first wife. Constructed in 1875 of Westerly Granite, the chapel was designed by George Keller, utilizing a variation on the same basic plan he had made earlier for his Grace Episcopal Church in Windsor.

Grace Episcopal Church (1864)

Constructed while he was still designing monuments for the firm of J. G. Batterson, George Keller's Grace Episcopal Church, on Broad Street Green in Windsor, is his earliest completed building. Just 21 years old at the time, Keller had just arrived in Hartford in 1864. The cornerstone was for the church was laid that year and the building was completed in 1865. Windsor's Episcopal parish had been established in 1842, and their first church building was built in 1845. The church designed by Keller, in the Gothic Revival style, was enlarged and rededicated in 1934.

Park Terrace Houses (1895)

This week, we will be looking at the architecture of George Keller. Born in Ireland, Keller came to the United States when he was ten. Taking up the study of architecture, he came to Hartford to design monuments for J.G. Batterson, producing many memorials for Cedar Hill Cemetery. He would later design the cemetery's Northam Memorial Chapel in 1882. Keller utilized a Gothic style and resisted the Classical and Colonial Revivals.

Primarily associated with churches and public buildings, Keller also designed houses, so we begin this week with the row houses he designed along Park Terrace in Hartford (above). These houses present a simplified form of Keller's "Modern Gothic" style. They also display similarities with Keller's design for the (no longer extant) Hartford High School building of 1883. He also designed a similar group of houses along Columbia Street in 1888-1889. The Park Terrace houses had a special significance for Keller, because the last house on the row (24 Park Terrace, below) became his own home as the fee for planning the project.

St. John's Episcopal Church, East Hartford (1867)

St. John's Episcopal Church, at Rector and Main Streets in East Hartford, was built between 1867 and 1869. The High Victorian Gothic-style church was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, and displays that architect's interest in polychromatism, which he would use again in his Church of the Good Shepherd and Parish House in Hartford and Trinity Church in Wethersfield, as well as in the domestic architecture of the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Rev. John J. McCook, the volunteer rector of St. John's Parish at the time, was instrumental in bringing about the building of the church.

The Huntingdon House (1901)

The Huntington House, located along Windsor's Broad Street Green, was built in 1901 and was lived in by members of the Huntington family until 1908. It is a Neo-Classical Revival and Colonial Revival style house, modeled on a Newport mansion. In 2001, the house was restored and opened to the public as the Huntington House Museum, but closed in 2005 due to a lack of community support. It now serves as offices.

The Benjamin Moore House (1770)

This house is unrelated to the paints. The Benjamin Moore House was originally built around 1770 in Poquonock, a northern area of Windsor. It was constructed by Simeon and Hannah Barber Moore but, after they moved to Torrington in the 1780s, it was passed on to their son Benjamin and his siblings, Eldad and Hannah. In 1801 they applied for a mortgage which was held by Oliver Ellsworth. But even with an additional loan, the Moores had sold off their property by 1806. In 1986, the house was saved from demolition by Edward Sunderland, of Sunderland Period Homes, who dismantled it and moved it five miles away to its present location, where it is now part of Ellsworth Settlement in Windsor, a modern development consisting of relocated period homes. The house's current Connecticut River Valley doorway is an appropriate reproduction. The house was featured in an article in the February, 2008 issue of the magazine, Early American Life. The house is currently for sale.

The Joseph Rainey House (1830)

The date the Joseph Rainey House, on Palisado Avenue in Windsor, was built is unknown, but the Greek Revival style was popular in the 1820s and 1830s. It is also possible that the Greek Revival section was added to an earlier building owned by Jonathan Ellsworth. Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing South Carolina from 1870 to 1879. He bought the house as a summer home in 1874. The house is on the Connecticut Freedom trail.

The James Colt House (1856)

Built on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford for the brother of Sam Colt, the Italianate-style James Colt House was built in 1856. Like the other Italianate houses along the same block, including Sam Colt's own Armsmear, with which it shares many design features, the James Colt House has been attributed to the architect Octavius J. Jordan. In 1976, the house was the first in Hartford to be restored with a grant from the National Park Service and Federal tax incentives.

The Edmund Hurlburt House (1860)

Built around 1860, the Edmund Hurlburt House is a great example of Italianate architecture, featuring an elaborate portico, with paired arched windows above, and a cupola. Hurlbut and his partner, James Ashmead, were in the goldbeating business. The house is located on Congress Street, which Hurlburt and Ashmead helped develop and which is now a historic district with many Greek Revival and Italianate houses. Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney, the founders of Pratt and Whitney, also lived on Congress Street.

The George A. Fairfield House (1866)

George A. Fairfield was a prominent leader in Hartford's industrial growth after the Civil War. He was president of the Weed Sewing Machine Company and the Hartford Machine Screw Company. Fairfield Avenue was named for him and in 1866 he built an imposing Second Empire style mansion there. The house features many extravagant elements, including an medieval-style octagonal tower to the rear. The house is now subdivided into condominiums. The Oliver H. Easton House, another striking Second Empire home, is located across the street.

Temple Beth Israel (1936)

Congregation Beth Israel, Connecticut's oldest Jewish congregation, was established in 1843. It is now one of the largest Reform congregations in the northeast. The first synagogue was built in Hartford in 1876 and is today the Charter Oak Cultural Center. In 1936, the congregation moved to a new building, on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford. Designed by Charles R. Greco, Temple Beth Israel was built in the Neo-Byzantine style and features a prominent Byzantine dome. The congregation received a West Hartford Historic Preservation Award in 2006 for the meticulous restoration of the synagogue.

The J.C. Brown House (1833)

The J.C. Brown House was originally built, on Maple Street in Bristol, for the clockmaker Lawson Ives in 1833. Lawson and his uncle Chauncey Ives began the clock-making firm of C. and L.C. Ives in 1830. The company eventually failed in the wake of the 1837 Panic and ensuing depression. The house was sold in 1844 to J.C. Brown, another clockmaker, who often had the image of his house painted tablet of his ogee shelf clocks. After his bankruptcy in 1856, Brown's clock company was bought by the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Company (later to become the Sessions Clock Company). The Greek Revival style Brown House has two entrances with columned porticos: the one facing Maple Street (west elevation) has Ionic columns and the one facing Woodland Street (south elevation) has Doric columns. The house has been converted for use as offices.

The Dr. Roger Waldo House (1750)

At the intersection of Moulton Road and the Old Turnpike in Mansfield is a one-and-a-half story house with overhanging gable ends, probably built in the middle of the eighteenth century. Around 1770, it was purchased by Seth Pierce, Sr. and Jr., who sold it to Dr. Roger Waldo in 1798. Waldo, who died in 1816, was a prominent physician and representative at the Connecticut General Assembly. There is evidence of a blacksmith shop possibly having been on the property, which would have served the Mansfield Four Corners community.

The Clifford D. Cheney House (1904)

One of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers, the Clifford D. Cheney House, on Forest Street in Manchester, faces Hartford Road across the "Great Lawn," around which the mansions are situated. The house, like a number of the other Cheney mansions, was designed by Charles Adams Platt, an architect, artist and landscape designer, whose mother was Mary Elizabeth Cheney. The house is distinctive with its pink stuccoed exterior.

Windham Town Hall (1896)

The town of Windham held its first public meeting in 1691. As the area of Willimantic grew after the Civil War, various buildings in the borough were used for town meetings. Having utilized a room in the Savings Institute building, in 1880 the town offices were settled in the Hayden Block. Rising rents forced another move to a space above a silk mill. By 1893, when Willimantic became a city, the need for a city hall and county court building was clear, one that would serve all of Windham. There was much dissension in town over the cost and location of the new structure. After some prolonged political battles among various factions, construction began in 1895 and was completed in 1896. The impressive Victorian style building , with its elaborate clock tower, was designed by the noted architect, Warren Richard Briggs, (author of the 1899 book, Modern American School Buildings). A detailed history of the Town Hall's construction can be found in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) at the Thread City website.

The Corner House (1783)

Located at the corner of Main Street and Farmington Avenue in Farmington, the Corner House was built in 1783 and in more recent times was a restaurant. Today it is used for offices and the Farmington Inn is attached to it.

The Dexter-Adams House (1781)

The Dexter-Adams House, on Centre Street in Mansfield, was built sometime after the land it was constructed on was purchased in 1781 by William and Nathan Dexter. It was purchased in 1803 by Barzillai Swift and was later lived in by his daughter, Lucy, and her husband, Dr. Jabez Adams, one of Mansfield and Windham's physicians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He worked for a while in partnership with his brother-in-law, Dr. Earl Swift. Dr. Adams' daughter, Alice, married the builder Edwin Fitch, who possibly made some of the later alterations to the house. The nineteenth century changes include the addition of a mansard roof and a porch.

Beleden (1910)

Beleden, one of Connecticut's great high-style mansions, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol. Designed by the architect Samuel Brown of Boston, Beleden was built for William Edwin Sessions, of the Sessions Clock Company. The Sessions family operated a foundry that had been producing castings for the E.N. Welch Company, a Forrestville clock manufacturer. Around 1900, Sessions purchased E.N. Welch and in 1903 renamed it the Sessions Clock Company. In 1906, William E. Sessions, who had been living in a house on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, purchased the adjacent house and land of Nathan L. Birge. The Birge House was torn down and over the next 4 years Beleden, completed in 1910, was constructed. The U-shaped brownstone mansion was once the centerpiece of a large estate, which featured formal and English gardens, a pool, greenhouses and grape arbors. These former grounds were later divided by Beleden Gardens Drive and built-up with smaller homes. Two buildings, a coachman's lodge and a gardener's cottage, were originally part of the estate but are now separated from the main house by newer structures.

The Samuel Boardman House (1769)

The 1769 home of Samuel Boardman, a soldier during the Revolutionary War and a manufacturer of saltpetre, is located on Main Street in Wethersfield, near Wethersfield Cove.

Munsill Carriage House (1893)

The carriage house of the Mary Borden Munsill House, on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford, has much variety, featuring elaborate details in the Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque styles.

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.

The John Birge House (1880)

John Birge was a state senator and president of N. L. Birge and Sons, a knitting mill, which had been founded by his father, Nathan L. Birge. His grandfather was John Birge, who had played an important role in Bristol's clockmaking industry. Birge's house, on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, was built around 1880. After his death, the house was purchased by William J. Tracy, who would found Tracy-Driscoll & Co. in 1920. Note the house in the upper-left of the historic image linked to above.

The Captain Charles Arnold House (1825)

Charles Arnold, a carpenter and builder and a captain in the Connecticut Militia, built his brick Federal-style house on Storrs Road in Mansfield soon after purchasing the land in 1824. He later exchanged houses with Joseph Sollace, also a carpenter and wagon maker. Today the brick is painted and the front entrance has a portico with columns, now glassed-in.

The George Hubbard House (1669)

A very early date of 1637 has been claimed for the house of George Hubbard, an early Wethersfield settler, on Main Street, near Wethersfield Cove. It is more likely that the oldest part of the house was actually constructed in the late 1660s by the merchant and ship owner, John Blackleach. This would have been a simple one room below with a chamber above. Blackleach also had a textile and silver shop. The house was later expanded into a saltbox. One website claims this was also the home of Nathaniel Stillman III. A modern wing, with seventeenth century-style facade, has been added to the house in recent years.

Old Willimantic Post Office (1909)

Located at the corner of Main and High Streets in Willimantic is a building which was constructed from 1909 to 1912 and then served as a United States Post Office from 1912 to December of 1966, when a new building opened just up Main Street. Left empty for almost thirty years, the old Post Office was renovated and is now a restaurant and microbrewery called the Willimantic Brewing Company.

Castle Largo (1880)

Castle Largo is an unusual edifice, located at the intersection of Center and Main Streets in the Federal Hill area of Bristol. A miniature castle featuring elements of the Gothic Revival, Italianate and Second Empire styles, it was constructed in three stages in 1880 and is one of a number of interesting houses in Bristol designed by the local inventor Joel T. Case. After living in it for a few months, Case sold it to Charles Henry Wightman, a 24-year-old businessman.