Aretus Rising (1800-1884) was born in Suffield, Connecticut, and tended to his father’s farm before graduating from the Berkshire Medical College in Western Massachusetts in 1826. Dr. Aretus Rising operated his medical practice in Suffield in the 1840s and would eventually build this unique home in 1854. Designed in the Greek Revival style with the emergence of the Italianate style, the home features a square form with broad overhanging eaves and a wrap-around porch supported by latticed columns.
Set back from tree-lined Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, the Phelps-Hatheway House stands as one of the largest, and best-preserved Colonial era homes in New England. The center-chimney residence was built by 1762 by Thomas “Shem” Burbank, where he and his wife, Anna Fitch Burbank, raised nine children. Due to the unstable national economy during and after the American Revolution, the family’s financial situation suffered and they would sell the residence in 1788 to Oliver Phelps. at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Phelps joined the Continental Army and fought in the Battle of Lexington. He served as Deputy Commissary under George Washington and following the War, he became a prominent businessman and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1785 and served on the Governor’s council in 1786 (Suffield was still a part of Massachusetts at this point). In 1794, Phelps commissioned the addition of a substantial wing designed by Thomas Hayden of Windsor. Under the employ of Hayden, a young Asher Benjamin, later to become one of the most important architects of the Federal period, was one of the workers on the new wing and is believed to have carved the Ionic capitals of the wing’s entryway. Inside, the addition was decorated with imported Parisian wallpaper. When Phelps died, the house was owned by the Hatheway family for a century and is currently open as a house museum, the Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden, administered by Connecticut Landmarks.
The Spencer family emigrated from Braintree, England to America in 1638, with Thomas Spencer settling in Hartford, Connecticut in 1640. Thomas Spencer Jr., the second generation in Connecticut moved to modern-day Suffield in the 1670s. Generations later, Israel L. Spencer (1833-1887) became a businessman and politician, later being employed at the First National Bank in Suffield, continuing the family’s successful legacy in town. Mr. Spencer had this Italianate house on South Main Street built for him and his family. Israel’s son Charles L. Spencer grew up in the home, later following in his father’s footsteps becoming the president of the local bank. The house has been restored since this photo was taken in 2020.
In 1775, when news of the Battle of Lexington reached Suffield, Connecticut, Elihu Kent Sr. (1733-1814) at the age of 42, took command of a local militia of 59 men the next day. The militia, along with his son Elihu Kent Jr. (then 16 years old) and a person whom he enslaved, Titus Kent, marched to Springfield, before heading east to Boston. The troops would end up on Long Island and Elihu Kent Jr. was captured by British forces and confined for a long time as a prisoner of war in the old Rhinelander Sugar House in New York. After his return to Suffield, Elihu Kent Jr. had this Georgian home on Main Street built for his family, where he ran an inn and operated a farm.
Between 1900 and 1970, the town of Suffield, Connecticut, saw a doubling of its population and its historic Kent Memorial Library building, constructed in 1899, was outgrown. The city gathered funds to construct a new library, knowing that the endowment for the day-to-day operations of the library by Sidney Kent, in memory of his parents, would transfer to a new building as long as the name carried with it. The town hired Warren Platner, an architect, interior designer and furniture designer, based out of New Haven to furnish designs for a new, Modern library. The handsome structure is one of the finest examples of a library designed in the Modern movement, with a concrete frame, faced with pink stone and white painted brick above. The form includes a landscaped, central garden court and a flat coffered concrete roof with broad overhangs to shelter the exterior courtyards. The interior is on five floor levels connected by gradual ramps with no stairs inside (at least at the time of construction). In 2008, the Town officials proposed a plan to demolish the library and replace it with a new structure, but the matter was voted down by residents who love the building, which is believed to be the only free-standing building designed by Warren Platner remaining in the country.
In 1897, Sidney A. Kent (1834-1900), a native of Suffield, Connecticut and later a successful Chicago businessman, sought to gift his hometown a library in the memory of his parents, Albert and Lucinda Kent, who died nearly a half-century earlier. A site was purchased from the Suffield Academy and funding was set aside for the new library before the turn of the 20th century. For the memorial building in Suffield, Sidney Kent hired architectural giant, Daniel Burnham, designer of the famous Flatiron Building in New York, who had also designed Kent’s home in Chicago. The Kent Memorial Library was dedicated in 1899 and is a stunning example of a library built in the Classical and Beaux Arts styles. Executed in smooth, granite ashlar, the facade has a central portico of two Ionic columns in antis and a shallow dome in the center of the copper clad roof. The library would eventually be outgrown and a contemporary library was built nearby on the town’s Main Street. The old Kent Memorial Library was acquired by Suffield Academy and renamed the S. Kent Legare Library.
In 1795, Ebenezer King Jr. (1762-1824) bought 26 acres of land on Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, to build this stately manse. He at the time was at the height of his prosperity and lived lavishly from his new mansion until he sold his property in 1811. King’s estate was purchased by William Gay (1767-1844), a prominent lawyer and the son of Ebenezer Gay, who had been the longtime pastor of the Congregational church and lived nearby. Aside from his law practice, William Gay was also the postmaster of the town for 35 years, and for much of that time the post office was located here in his living room. The home remained in the Gay Family for generations until it was eventually purchased by Suffield Academy for use as the headmaster’s home. The symmetrical Federal style residence features a five-by-five-bay square form with center entrance. The facade is dominated by an elaborate Federal style entry with fanlight transom and Palladian stairhall window on the second floor, which is mimicked with a smaller version in the gabled peak at the roof.
Ebenezer Gay (1718-1796), the third minister of the First Congregational Church of Suffield, was born in 1718 in Dedham. His father was a farmer and his uncle was the famous minister, Ebenezer Gay of Hingham. Ebenezer graduated from Harvard in 1737, and held his first preaching job three years later. Reverend Gay became a candidate for a pastor in the Suffield Congregation, becoming ordained in 1742. That same year he married his wife, Hannah, and they had this stately Georgian home built adjacent to the town’s church. When he was not traveling to preach in other parishes and visiting family, Gay supervised work on his farm, keeping slaves as was customary for ministers, magistrates, and tavern-keepers. Reverend Ebenezer Gay enslaved at least two people who were later freed by his sons after his death. One of the enslaved was “Titus”, who later was known as “Old Ti“. Titus was freed from enslavement in 1812, but continued to work for Ebenezer Gay Jr., the reverend of the Congregational Church in town, where he worked as a Sexton, janitor, and bell-ringer until his death in 1837. Ebenezer Gay Jr. also ran a school in one room of this home with a library in another. The gambrel roof Georgian mansion features a stunning Connecticut Valley doorway with swan’s neck pediment.
The founding of Suffield Academy began in 1833 with the mission to educate young men for the ministry in the Baptist church. Despite its founding links to the Baptist Church, the institute quickly moved towards a non-denominational model and became the Connecticut Literary Institute. The school later rebranded as Suffield Academy serving as the only high school in town. The school received tax revenue from the community to allow boys outside the Baptist faith to study there. Later, with changing views of women’s right to education, the school allowed women into the school in 1843. Forty years later, the school constructed this building, then known as the ‘Ladies Building’, built next door to the school’s 1854 Memorial Hall. When built, the structure was Victorian Gothic and Second Empire in style but was heavily modified in 1953 in the Colonial Revival style, where the mansard roof and porch were removed and the building becoming a stripped-down version of a Colonial schoolhouse capped by a cupola on the roof.
Initially established in 1833 as the Connecticut Literary Institute and later renamed Suffield Academy in 1937, the institution was founded with the mission to educate young men for the Baptist ministry. As the Connecticut Literary Institute was the only high school in Suffield, the town tax dollars paid for local students to attend. Originally built for the Institute in 1854, this large brick academic building was designed in the Italianate style with brackets and decorative brickwork at the cornice until about a century later when the school redesigned its campus in the Colonial Revival style. The Memorial Building was stripped down of pomp and renovated into its present appearance, but it maintains its historic form and fenestration.
Early Baptists in the area of present-day Suffield, Connecticut, organized in the western part of town, and built a church there in 1769, far from the town center, which began to rapidly develop in the early 19th century. By the turn of the 19th century, residents not wanting to travel all the way to West Suffield to attend services, petitioned to create a Second Baptist Church congregation. By 1840, the members were able to fund this handsome brick edifice, built in the Greek Revival style by architect, Henry A. Sykes, who had trained under Ithiel Town of New Haven, clearly where he mastered church designs by a prominent practitioner of the Greek Revival style in New England. The Second Baptist Church of Suffield features a massive portico on its facade with six fluted, Ionic columns supporting the pediment above. The tower of the church is two stages, one squared and the upper round, with fluted piers and Ionic columns and carved consoles. The tower is capped by a gilded dome with weather vane.
Before the invention of the automobile, horseback was the most effective way to get around. In nearly every town in New England, a saddler would make harnesses, straps, and saddles from leather in small, vernacular shops like this structure in Suffield, Connecticut. The Williston Saddle Shop is said to have been built in 1776 by Consider Williston (1739-1794), who served as a Lieutenant in the American Revolution, and is sited on the town’s iconic Main Street, which is lined by stately homes, churches, and institutional buildings of all eras. The vernacular Williston Saddle Shop retains its unique character, even since it was converted to a private residence.
This Italianate mansion on Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, was built around 1855 for Byron Loomis (1831-1896), near the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Cowles in 1854. The house was possibly as a gift from his father Neland, one of the many successful tobacco barons that harvested tobacco, and packaged and shipped the product to markets all over the east coast. The Byron Loomis House is a large Italianate mansion with a boxy form with walls covered in flushboard siding. The low sloped roof with broad overhanging eaves is supported by large brackets and is topped with a large square belvedere.
Located on Suffield’s iconic Main Street, this enchanting 19th century residence stands as a testament to the impact and role the tobacco industry had on the community historically. The residence seen here was built for Charles Loomis of the Loomis Family, who made their fortune in the tobacco farming and rolling industry in Suffield, Connecticut. Charles F. Loomis used his tobacco money to have this asymmetrical Italianate Villa constructed in 1862. The home features a prominent three-story tower capped with iron cresting, broad overhanging eaves with brackets and some stickwork, and a gorgeous door with arched transom and sidelights.
This large Italianate style residence on Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, was built in 1860 by John Wells Loomis for his son, George. George ran a cigar shop in a separate building on the lot, selling rolled cigars from tobacco that his business harvested and rolled. The mansion features a belvedere atop the low sloped hip roof with broad overhanging eaves. George was set to run the family business after his father, George. In 1881, two years after his father’s death, George Loomis sold the tobacco business founded by his father and moved to New Haven. In 1912, Polish residents bought the house, and it became the rectory for St. Joseph Church.
Buildings of New England 
