In a land just down the road (Ct.), there existed old stuff that we went to visit. Of course we were mill hunting. I have this quest to cover as much of the New England old mill towns as I can before I move off to the Southwest to begin my sojourns there.
According to the Connecticut Trust Historic Preservation, there are over 1,400 extant mill buildings and complexes throughout Connecticut that are documented, including vacant, underutilized and distressed sites. I don't think I will get to them all, but it sure does excite me to know our Industrial past sits awaiting my visit.
On the day we headed out, we were going to Glastonbury, Ct., but got off the Wethersfield exit. To our delight we landed in about 1650- no really, that's what it felt like as they have a whole district that has little changed. So now I will share what we saw.
A cool stumble upon- groove on those literary landmarks. Haven’t hunted them in a long while.
Simple in design and impeccably maintained, this colonial era home is a beautiful example of a simple home. The doorway, usually centrally located, in those times was often the primary decorative feature.
BUTTOLPH-WILLIAMS HOUSE
Built for Benjamin Belden around 1715, this house - now a museum - provided the setting for Elizabeth George Speare's award-winning novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which depicts a young woman's encounter with superstition and intolerance in a 17th century New England town.
There were plaques galore! Talk about historic. Everything was so neat, clean, and well-preserved. Even the people!
Abraham Finch homesite (original- 1634) + Allyn Smith House (1790). Chimney note: typically, chimneys of this period are red brick with corbelling= brick courses which step upward and outward.
I really liked this house- probably an 18th century Georgian (5 over 4 windows as a give away). The half window on top made it stand out to me. I wonder how much it cost to heat some of these huge houses? I'm betting since Wethersfield is considered a suburb of Hartford that many of the folks who live in these houses are in the insurance business. There certainly aren't any mill owners or millhands hanging around.
The Silas Robbins House: 7 beds, 11 bathes + a price tag of about $2 million is a second empire style with mansard roof (named after the fashionable Paris architecture during the reign of Napoleon III). Silas Robbins, an owner of the seed business Johnson, Robbins and Co., built the large house in 1873. Can you imagine selling enough seeds to build something like this?I can’t.
The Connecticut River runs along Wethersfield’s eastern flank while Hartford, Newington, and Rocky Hill border it to the north, west, and south, respectively. Settled in 1634 (some say earlier), this Hartford County town vies with Windsor for “first town” status. Early on it weathered witch trials but grew to importance as shipbuilding, onion growing, and trade brought wealth. The Old Wethersfield Historic District, with over 150 structures built before 1850, preserves the town’s rich heritage.
The Anderson Farm, circa 1837 is still in operation. I couldn't find out anything about them. I know that originally onions were the big crop, then seeds, but unsure what is the going thing these days.
The trees in this town look old, tall, sturdy, and majestic.
A sampling of the homes along the Broad Street Green.
Much ado the colonial history, but there is Indigenous history as well. Learned a little about the Wangunk tribe in the area as well as a brief mention of the Pequot War (not anything about their decimation thru massacre or the selling of the captives into slavery).
Founded in 1634 as Connecticut's first permanent English settlement, Wethersfield was described as the state's ''most auncient'' town by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut in 1650. The approximately two-mile rectangular strip called Old Wethersfield is a National Historic place. It truly was a pristine place, right down to the stoic and basically unfriendly Yankee types that strolled by us. Definitely felt the difference between Western MA hilltown folk (us) and proper authentic historic Hartford suburb people (them).
I was surprised by the diversity of housing styles in the historic district. I am beginning to see and understand the growth and change of communities through the architecture. I really enjoy this and hope to learn all about the Southwest when I get there. I will be not be sad to leave New England as I now have documented what I want to remember when I sit in my dotage and reflect nostalgically on my New England past.
Built in 1792 on Broad Street in Wethersfield, the Robert Robbins House is one of a number of brick Federal style homes in the town designed by James Francis. Wonder where those bricks were made!? I admittedly traveled down a little rabbit-hole of regional brick and stone this past winter (it was my magnificent obsession of the season).
The Tavern of John Chester on Broad Street in Wethersfield was built in the 1730s. If those walls could talk, I wonder what they would say?
New home built in 1900!
Old Wethersfield’s earliest foundations were of native brownstone (similar/same geological time period as the famous “Longmeadow brownstone”), field stone, stone topped with brick, or in some cases cut stone. This house on Broad St. is a good example of blended foundation.
Classic Colonial: The Allyn Smith House, a classic Georgian style home in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Circa 1790.
Here is a mention of the Pequot War, but it is calling the massacre to the English settlers and specifically the death of one Abraham Finch, Jr., whom they call “one of the adventurers.” On April 23, 1637 a large force of Pequot warriors attacked English settlers at Wethersfield on their way to their fields in the Great Meadow along the Connecticut River. The Pequot killed nine men and women and captured two girls who were brought to Pequot territory.
Built in 1898, on Main Street in Wethersfield, the town’s Grange Hall served as a meeting place and social center for farmers and their families. The Grange Movement, which began after the Civil War, focused on encouraging farm families to bond together for their own economic and political benefit. The town’s grange was founded in 1890 and received support from the State Grange. The organization hosted numerous programs that provided an active social life for Wethersfield families. Members met at the Old Academy building until 1898, when the Grange Hall was completed. I wonder what it functions as now?
The Wethersfield Academy was built in 1804 at a final cost of $3489.52 including land. This cost was paid partly by public funds and partly by donations. The academy opened later that year as a high school, teaching primarily higher mathematics and navigation. In the 1820s Rev. Joseph Emerson rented the building from the First School Society for use as a female seminary. As many as 100 female students from New England and the surrounding areas were boarded in local homes and took classes at the school. The academy operated in this manner for approximately 20 years. On New Year’s Eve of 1839 fire gutted the building. It was rebuilt a year later and opened once again as a high school, with a large upstairs hall that was used for various town and church functions such as meetings and dances. In 1894 the building ceased to be used as a school. A library occupied the lower level, and the first town library was established there in 1908. Eventually the town clerk and other local government offices were moved into the building as well, and it became the town hall. A new town hall was built in 1959 and the Academy building became home to the Wethersfield Historical Society.
Very cool street signs!
The brick Georgian Hurlbut-Dunham House is typical of many New England houses. It was updated in the 1860's with porches, a colonnade and a commanding belvedere. Much of the last owner's furnishings and collections remain, and a center-hall bombe breakfront is aflow with blue and white china. We did not feel the desire to go inside any of the homes we strolled by.
Built in 1787 for Henry Deming on Main Street in Wethersfield and later owned by the Standish family, the Deming-Standish House was given to the town of Wethersfield in 1928. It is very similar to the 1783 brick house built for Samuel Woodhouse, Jr., on nearby River Road. In 1800, James Francis and his cousin, Simeon, were contracted to do the woodworking of the front rooms and the windows, the facade thus being updated in the Federal style. Within a few years, the neighboring Hurlbut and Shepard Houses would be constructed in the Federal style. The house was leased to the Wethersfield Historical Society in 1983 and over the years has been rented to different proprietors as a restaurant, first as The Standish House, and more recently as The Village Tavern and now Lucky Lous.
Lucky Lous Bar and Grill is the reason for the guitar bird bath. Am pretty sure this was not manufactured in the 1600's.
In 1781, the Webb House hosted Washington and Rochambeau as they planned for the battle at Yorktown, Virginia.
The Reverend Donald W. Morgan house, is a brick Greek Revival structure built in 1832 for the John Williams family. The First Church of Christ congregation purchased it in 1954 for use as a parsonage.
In the 1800s, a state prison and commercial seed production led Wethersfield’s economy, and the 20th century saw it transform into a residential suburb of Hartford. Comstock, Ferre, which was founded in 1811 and is the nation's oldest continuously operated seed company.
During the 19th century, Wethersfield became a center of the American seed industry, thanks to ideal growing conditions in the rich soil of the Wethersfield Meadows along the Connecticut River. Of the seven or so seed companies that once operated in Wethersfield, only Comstock, Ferre and Chas. C. Hart Seed Co. remain.
The Ancient Burying Ground has stories going back to the 1630’s and is listed on the Ct. Freedom Trail due to a slave who died a free man and is buried there. The stones range from simple slabs with crude letters to ornate tables and tombs boasting carved heads and cherub faces. We were not able to access the burying grounds. Another day perhaps.
Finally we headed over to Glastonbury, an equally old Ct. town, but a town with a Mill!
The progenator of the Mill- the Shaving Soap Factory (1849) in Glastonbury, Ct. was J.B. Williams. He had this 3-story Italianate mansion built by a Westfield, MA architect (Lucius Thayer) in 1859.
The mansion is now broken up into apartments. James Baker Williams (1818-1907) now has a park named for him.
This monsterous mansion of David W. Williams on Williams Street is a 1895 large Transitional Queen Anne Shingle house. It has 5 chimneys, and 11 fireplaces It is a stones throw away from J.B.’s house, but is on an elevated site. The Williams family must have dominated this town in the mid-late 1800’s. There is a 3rd Williams home built in 1905 that also is a huge 3-story Classical Revival home on Hubbard Street, but it is elevated and set back in the woods and can’t be seen from the street. All houses form a sort of triangle that looks down on the once vast Soap factory that was just down the hill/street from the Williams' homes.
This 1890 Italianate was once the home of J.S. Williams, and now is called Clayton House, an Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center. Yeah for reuse.
A view from up above where the Williams family homes are located. The extensive Williams clan became a major political and philanthropic power in the town for several generations. They built a cluster of houses near the factory complex. All but one of the mid-1800’s frame factory buildings were demolished in 1977. What remains (and now are reasonably priced condo’s) is a large complex of newer brick bldgs. built at the turn of the century.
This handsome Georgian Revival building was once headquarters/adminstration building of the J.B. Williams Co.,The 10,296-square-foot building was built in 1910 and sits on a 1.5-acre lot with 41 parking spaces, it was next the home of the board of education for the town, and now apparently home to a interpreter and translator co. It sure is pretty.
Some history on the factory that once dominated this midsized town (34,000) southeast of Hartford: Seven people made all the soap in 1840. The payroll doubled by 1860. The men mixed the compounds, boiled the tallow and pressed the soap into bars.
Women wrapped and labeled the products. It was one of the first factories to hire women. Ink and blacking -- shoe polish made from a base of apple cider jelly -- were soon added to the product line. In 1880, son David formed his own company and produced a laundry soap he called Ivorine. The two firms merged five years later.
Much of the success was said to stem from the fact that the J.B. Williams Co. kept to the basics. Two large cauldrons, one made of cast iron, the other of copper, held center stage. Beef fats and lye made from wood ashes were mixed and boiled, other chemicals added and the resulting soap poured out into pans. ``Yankee Soap'' was a combination of the basic hardstock soap and the Williams' special shaving soap, called ``Barber's Bar Soap.'' Men in the factory would pound chunks of the two soaps together by hand and then press the resulting blend into cakes. Hydraulic presses and power mixers were added later.
267 Williams is a vernacular 1875 Ell construction 2 story house. These are fairly common in all of New England, the everyperson’s home. This National Historic area is unique in that it had a large mill dominate the town, but was not considered a mill village and has little mill housing as such. Glastonbury is old and was established when the soap co. came into being so there was little need to build a company town/mill village.
You can see the back side of one of the 3 brick circa 1900-1910 factory buildings and the brook which flows to the dam for the mill site in this picture.
J.B. Williams developed his shaving-soap formula while a partner in a Manchester drug store, then moved production of his Williams Genuine Yankee Soap to Glastonbury in 1849. It is considered the world's first shaving-soap manufacturer.
The company went on to make such products as Aqua Velva and Williams Lectric Shave. J.B. Williams' son developed Ivorine soap, now sold as Ivory Soap. The company was sold to Pharmaceuticals Incorporated of New Jersey in 1957, then to Nabisco in 1971. What remains of the brick
Another really cute and neat Ell-shaped clapboard house with an 1860 placard on the building. This house was once part of the David W. Williams property and was moved to this location to make way for the highway.
This former Hale Homestead is a 1745 brick constructed home on Main St. in Glastonbury, Ct. It last sold for $418,100 in 2003.
Built sometime in the first third of the 18th century, the Kimberly Mansion is an historic house in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It has served as a home for about 300 years and its most famous residents were sisters Abby and Julia Smith, both of whom were fierce political activists involved in causes including abolitionism but especially women's suffrage. It was listed to the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
This house is also on the Ct. Freedom Trail. The Smith family used this house as a base for its anti-slavery activities. The five Smith sisters and their parents hosted abolitionist meetings, permitted anti-slavery lectures on the lawn, distributed literature and obtained signatures on anti-slavery petitions. At this site, the family worked with African American anti-slavery leaders and sought not only the end of slavery, but also improved conditions for free blacks. Julia (1792-1886) and Abby (1797-1878) Smith involved themselves wholeheartedly in the abolitionist cause. With their mother Hannah (1767-1850), they circulated an anti-slavery petition among the women of Glastonbury, obtained 40 signatures and sent the petition to U.S. Senator John Quincy Adams to present to Congress. Historians often suggest that this was the first petition to receive such a hearing. The Smiths of Glastonbury were inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994 and the home is a National Historic Landmark. The property is privately owned and not open to the public. I quickly ran out and snapped this picture.
Of course I had to find the Mill street in this medium-sized town. It is on the whole other side of Glastonbury from the Soap Factory and seemingly on the “wrong side of the tracks” as the scenery was no longer quaint and historic. The Soap Factory was on the Hubbard Brook, and Mill St. is on Salmon Brook.
Aha! Mill Housing!
We were thrilled to see that the bridge over the brook was a WPA built bridge from 1939. Good ole FDR, putting people to work improving our infrastructures.
Salmon Brook. as it flows to Mill St. in Glastonbury, Ct.
In case you enjoy the sound of running water like I do!
As we traveled down the short little Mill St. my nose began to twitch. And then… it appeared as they always do in the near distance…
Right at the corner of Mill and Addison Rd. was…Addison Mill.
In the lobby of the former textile mill hangs a photograph of a whiskered, stern-looking Addison Clark, who owned the mill in the mid-1800s. Then, there is an advertisement for the Glastenbury Knitting Co., one of several companies to operate in the building, which outfitted soldiers in World War I with long johns. In total the mill operated for 187 years!
It is an odd little area of the town. Obviously once the industrial area, with some weird 1970’s twists here and there.
Here’s what they say about the place: Originally constructed in the 1860s, Addison Mill is an award-winning re-use of a historic mill featuring 55 unique loft apartments in a boutique luxury community.
Featuring a waterfall, lofted ceilings, oversized windows, timber beams, and exposed brick walls, mixed with modern amenities, Addison Mill is only 2 miles from downtown Glastonbury. Overlooking Addison Pond, the community is situated on 3 acres of tranquility. Hooray for re-use. I am dubious about the luxury community, but ya never know. There may be some highbrowing going on in there.
Like the Air-Flo Instrument Co., supplier of Meteorological & mechanical instruments. Is it open or closed?
An unusual shape for a mill or double house. This one is a fairly new construction of 1918.
Always happy to find extant mill housing. Makes me feel American!
I need to share this so I remember to visit Ct. again (and again, only about 1,300 or so to go).
