First President’s House, Wesleyan University (1837)

http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=590

The Savage-Butler Homestead (1806)

http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=587

One Year Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of Historic Buildings of Connecticut. For those who don't know yet, the blog has moved to a new address, which is where updates and new buildings have been appearing, so please change your links and bookmarks!

Go to

http://historicbuildingsct.com/

Remember, Go to http://historicbuildingsct.com

http://historicbuildingsct.com is the new site!

The Big Red House

Built sometime in Colonial Times, the Big Red House is on a street in Connecticut somewhere. It is said Washington once slept here, but there is also a quite fascinating and little told tale about the house. When Washington was here, he lost his teeth, and was not able to find them anywhere! When he left, he had still not recovered them. He also had many Cherry trees cut down in the back yard. No one is certain why he did this. Years later the house was made a museum by Wallace Nutting’s lesser known younger brother Going Nutting. When he first bought the house, he wanted to sleep in the same bedroom Washington had been in. That night, he woke up yelling out in pain. “What’s the matter?” his wife, Mihitababble Nutting asked. “Well, dear,” he said, “I was rolling over in my sleep and something under the covers bit me!” Reaching down, Nutting pulled out Washington’s long lost teeth! He was so amazed by this discovery, he had the walls of one of the parlors downstairs painted with images of the teeth. He called it the “Washington’s Teeth” parlor. When the Colonial Damsels bought the house from Nutting, they felt that his claims about the teeth were overrated, so they had the murals painted over with pictures of tea parties, gentleman’s purses and lavender sachets. They felt the teeth Nutting had recovered could not have been the true teeth, because they were made of ivory, and everyone knows Washington’s teeth were made of wood (taken from cherry trees).

Move to a New Domain!

I'm trying out a new domain. It's historicbuildingsct.com. So basically, you just remove the "blogspot," otherwise the address is the same! This site will remain here, but new entries will appear there, together with all the old posts from here as well (all of the pictures through yesterday are staying here). So if you link here, please change the URL!

I hope that this new theme will also be an improvement. The nested categories should make navigation easier. Also, the use of pages in Wordpress will allow me to do some of the other things I've wanted to do beyond simply having a house each day, like writing more about history, architecture and places to visit. Please let me know (through comments) how you like the new site.

I have also launched a NEW blog! It's called Historic Buildings of Massachusetts -- just add "Mass." in front of historicbuildingsct.com! The concept is the same as with the Connecticut blog, although it probably will not be updated as much! However, I do hope to add to it more than has been the case with Historic Gravestones of Connecticut, which will be remaining on blogspot for the time being.

The Byron Loomis House (1850)

Byron Loomis was the son of Neland Loomis, one of the six Loomis brothers who established themselves in Suffield as tobacco merchants (another brother was John Welles Loomis). Byron Loomis, who became one of the wealthiest tobacco barons in Suffield, may have built his Italianate house on South Main Street as early as 1850, or perhaps in the 1860s.