Time for
us to head north toward New Hampshire and our eventual goal along the Maine
Coast. We left Waterford Connecticut on
CT Hwy. 32 and then took I-395 until we exited on CT Hwy. 169. As usual, I was attempting to minimize our
time on the Interstate Highway system…
Highway
169 is shown as a scenic route on many maps.
It didn’t take long before we started taking photos! It was the beginning of many photos of
striking architectural buildings along our route.
This is
the John Bishop House and Museum in Lisbon Connecticut. It was built ca. 1810 and it’s operated and
maintained through the Lisbon Historical Society. This Federal-style L-shaped farmhouse at 11
South Burnham Highway has 7 fireplaces.
Its worthy of note that this home has a well in the pantry/buttery so
the family didn’t have to go outside to get water.
Four
successive Congregational Church buildings had occupied the same spot on
Canterbury Green (Canterbury Connecticut) over a 300 year period. The church (congregation) was established in
1711 and then work began on the first church at the Green’s highest point. The second church was built in 1735 and the
third in 1805. This church may look old
but in reality it was built in 1964 to replace the previous building that
burned down in 1963. It does have that
classic New England look though…
This
house is known by various names…the Prudence Crandall House, Elisha Payne House
and as the Prudence Crandall School for Negro Girls. The house is notable for being the home of
Prudence Crandall, abolitionist and educator and for being the school for
African American girls from 1832 until 1834.
The home, which was built in 1805, is now home to the Prudence Crandall
Museum.
When the
school first opened it had all-white students, then Crandall admitted one black
girl. This is believed to be the first
integrated secondary school in the USA.
However, admission of the black girl led to protests and the withdrawal
of the white students. Crandall then
re-opened the school as an all-black school with up to 24 students, mostly
boarding students from other states.
Court
challenges followed and the case became a national sensation. The Connecticut Legislature passed a “Black
Law” in 1833 prohibiting blacks from out-of-state to receive education unless
the town the school was in specifically allowed it. Crandall was arrested and spent a night in
jail. Later, after receiving a court
ruling in favor of the school, a mob attacked the school with clubs and iron
bars breaking 90 windows. It had to be
terrifying for the students and Prudence as well… She closed the school the
next day.
Note:
·
Prudence
Crandall is the official female hero of the State of Connecticut.
This is
the “new” Trinity Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Connecticut. This stone Gothic Revival church was built in
the town center in 1866. Although this
striking structure with its parish house are where most services and celebrations
are held, the “Old” Trinity Episcopal Church, a wooden structure that we didn’t
see, is just down the road. That church
and this congregation is 247 years old, having been established in 1771.
The
Unitarian Meetinghouse in Brooklyn Connecticut was completed in 1774. Along with the old Trinity Episcopal Church,
this is one of a small number of pre-Revolutionary churches remaining in the
state. This congregation was organized
in 1731 and their first meeting house was in the nearby town of Pomfret. The Brooklyn Meetinghouse was first proposed
in 1763, but was opposed for many years by local Anglicans (Episcopalians). The bell tower is actually a ‘new’ addition to
the Meetinghouse, having been added in 1845.
This
church’s first Unitarian Minister was the Reverend Samuel May. He was a noted peace activist, education
reformer, temperance crusader and supporter of women’s rights. He was one of the principal supporters of
Prudence Crandall and her school. In
1871, the Unitarian Universalist Society in Brooklyn ordained Rev. Celia
Burleigh, the first female Unitarian minister in the country.
This is
the Town Hall for Brooklyn Connecticut.
This 2.5 story Federal style building was built in 1820. It has a full basement. I couldn’t find much about this building,
except that prior to its use as the town hall, it served the town as a
jail.
This is
the Lasell Alumni House at Pomfret School in Pomfret Connecticut. The school was founded in 1894. The campus includes brick Georgian and
Colonial Revival buildings built during the first decade of the 1900s. The campus was designed by renowned Landscape
designer Frederick Law Olmsted. (He designed Central Park in New York City and
many others) Well known architect Ernest
Flag designed many of the building on campus. (Learn more about Flag at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Flagg)
Pomfret
School is an independent college preparatory boarding and day school serving
360 students from grades 9 through 12.
The average class size is 11 and there is a teacher student ratio of
6:1. I personally attended a college
prep school, DeVeaux School in Niagara Falls NY, but it wasn’t as upscale as
Pomfret School appears to be.
A number
of buildings on campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of the more significant structures
include: The Admissions Building, ca. 1888; The Headmaster’s House built in
1896; Pomfret School’s Clark Chapel – 1908; The School House – 1907, and; four
brick dormitories ca. 1910.
To learn
more about the Pomfret School, you can go to their website at https://www.pomfret.org/. It’s pretty impressive…
This is
Roseland Cottage, aka. Henry C. Bowen House, in Woodstock Connecticut. The ‘cottage’ is listed as a National
Historic Landmark and it’s considered to be one of the best-preserved and best
documented Gothic summer houses in the USA.
The original interior décor is virtually intact. The entire complex includes a boxwood
parterre garden, an ice house, garden house, carriage barn and the nation’s
oldest surviving indoor bowling alley.
To say
the Henry Chandler Bowen was ‘connected’ would apparently be an
understatement. Chandler was a
businessman, philanthropist and publisher.
He founded the New York based Newspaper, The Independent.
Beginning
in 1870, the year that Congress made July 4th an official Federal
Holiday, the largest Fourth of July celebrations in the United States were held
at Roseland Cottage. Four US Presidents
visited the home as guests and speakers for these events. They included Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin
Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. Other prominent visitors included Henry Ward
Beecher, Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John C. Fremont.
Woodstock
Connecticut is just about 4 miles north of Pomfret on CT Hwy. 169…and here is
another historic school. This is the
Woodstock Academy’s Classroom Building.
Built in 1873, it’s the oldest building on the campus of the Woodstock
Academy. It’s the only academic building
in the state that has retained significant Italianate features.
Woodstock
Academy was founded in 1801. This
independent high school serves residents from Brooklyn, Canterbury, Eastford,
Pomfret, Union and Woodstock Connecticut.
Taxpayers from the various towns listed above pay student tuition
through municipal taxes. The school also
accepts tuition paying students from other surrounding towns and states as day
students and from elsewhere in the USA and the world as boarding students.
Remember
Henry Chandler Bowen, the original owner of Roseland Cottage and mega host for
July 4th celebrations? In
1843, Bowen purchased and renovated the Woodstock Academy. He also built a boarding house next to the
school. He came to the rescue again in
1867, raising funds for a new dormitory.
I’ve been
unable to find any information regarding the Crossroads Christian Church. It is a classic and handsome structure… I found
another photo of it in Flickr giving its location in North Woodstock
Connecticut. I should have written down
the location when I took the photo but I figured (in error) that finding it on
the Internet would be a ‘no-brainer’.
Wrong!
Notre
Dame Catholic Church on Main Street in Southbridge Massachusetts was built from
1912 – 1916. It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The parish was founded in 1869 to serve the needs of the French Canadian
community who began migrating to the area starting in the 1830s.
This was
the last of 3 churches built in the state for French congregations by Canadian
architect Joseph Venne. This very large
church is 190 feet long and 75 feet wide.
The tower is 210 feet high! The
organ for this church was built in 1916 by the Casavant Freres Pipe Organ
Company of Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada.
To learn more about this parish and church, go to http://www.stjp2parish.org/notre-dame-church/.
FYI…
About 2.1 million US residents cited a French-Canadian/Canadien ancestry in the
2010 US Census. Per that census, the
majority of them speak French at home.
There is a heavy concentration of Canadien Americans in New
England. In the late 1800s, with few
opportunities at home many of them immigrated from Quebec and New Brunswick to
work in USA textile mills, saw mills and logging camps.
The First
United Methodist Church in Southbridge Massachusetts was founded in 1834. However, I was unable to find any information
on this building and the church’s website doesn’t offer any history
either. It does appear to be an old
building…but so did that Congregational Church in Canterbury Connecticut.
By now,
it was getting a bit later in the morning and we had an attraction we wanted to
check out in New Hampshire before it closed.
So we kept moving along, taking photos whenever the impulse struck
us. Loved this old red New England style
home and barn. It was located somewhere
between Southbridge and Barre Massachusetts on MA Hwy 131, 148 or 67.
The first
public library for the town of Barre Massachusetts was founded as the result of
a gift from Samuel Gates in 1857, but there wasn’t any building where the
collection could be housed. Space for
the library was shared with the Post Office until the Barre Library Association
raised the funds to build an actual dedicated library. A generous gift from a prominent local
citizen named Henry Woods pushed the effort over the top. The library was completed in 1887.
The Woods
Memorial Library, located at 19 Pleasant Street really looks more like an old
mansion than a library doesn’t it? The
Library’s website is at https://www.barrelibrary.org/.
The Barre
Congregational Church was founded with 32 members in 1827. Today it has over 230 members. The church itself was completed in August of
1849. It was built in one year…on land
donated to the church by Henry Woods…the same Henry Woods who gave Barre a high
school plus the aforementioned library, both named in his honor.
Over the
years the church has had multiple steeples.
The first one was blown down in 1915, but parishioners fully restored
it. In 1938, the Great Hurricane blew
the steeple down again…and it was replaced again. There is a bell located in the middle tier of
the 3-tier steeple. To learn more about
this congregation, go to http://www.barrechurch.com/.
Note:
·
The 1938
Great New England Hurricane was the most powerful and deadly hurricane in
recorded New England History. It was a
Category 5 when it first struck Long Island on its route to Connecticut,
Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It’s
estimated that this storm killed 682 people, damaged or destroyed more than
57,000 homes and caused property losses of $4,700,000,000 measured in 2016
dollars.
I thought
that I’d end this post with this striking Greek revival home. This is the Lee/Holman House. It was built by Abiathar Lawrence in
1840. He lived in the house until
1877. It passed through the hands of a
couple other individuals until it was purchased by the Barre Gazette
Publishers. They actually printed a
local newspaper on the premises from 1933 until 1950. Today this home is once again a private
residence.
That’s
about it for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.
Thanks
for riding along with us on the backroads of Connecticut and Massachusetts!
Take
Care, Big Daddy Dave
