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Martha’s Vineyard National Bank Building // 1855

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Living on an island in the 19th century wasn’t as easy as you may think. Before this bank building in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard was constructed in 1855, all banking was done on the mainland, mostly in New Bedford. As Edgartown thrived as a whaling capital and later as a vacation destination, it was clear that a bank be built on the island for easy depositing and withdrawal of funds for residents. This bank, the first brick building constructed in Edgartown, was built to house the newly formed Martha’s Vineyard National Bank. It’s first president was Dr. Daniel Fisher, who made his money as a merchant and operator of one of the largest whale and sperm oil processing facilities in the country. The bank eventually relocated to Vineyard Haven and the Edgartown National Bank was created to fill the void in town. Amazingly, the building is still to this day occupied by a bank, Rockland Trust, seemingly adding to the continuous occupancy of the building by banking facilities for well over a century. The late iteration of the Greek Revival style is evident here with the heavy lintels over the oversized windows and the dentilled pediment at the facade.

Lewis-Zukowski Farm // 1781

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Located on a back road in Suffield, Connecticut, the Lewis-Zukowski Farmhouse stands as one of the oldest and largest brick homes found in this part of the state. The Federal period farmhouse was built in 1781 for Hezekiah Lewis, he was a farmer of modest prosperity. The farm was owned by subsequent owners until 1905, when it was purchased by Michael Zukowski, who was born in Poland around 1867. He arrived in Suffield with his family in 1888 and found a job working on a tobacco farm for $8 a month. He married in 1898 and became a naturalized citizen in 1900. By 1905, he had saved enough money to purchase this farm property for $2,800. He grew tobacco on his farm and raised his family, who retained the property throughout the 20th century. The rural farmhouse is architecturally significant as well as historically significant for its connections with the local tobacco industry and immigration that helped the community thrive in the 20th century.

First Church of Christ, Suffield // 1869

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Located adjacent to the Town Common, the First Church of Christ in Suffield showcases the grandiose architecture seen in many churches after the Civil War in New England. This brick edifice is the fifth in the history of the church which dates back to around 1680. This church building was designed by local architect John C. Mead, who designed other stately churches in the surrounding region. The church is a blending of Italianate and Romanesque Revival styles and originally featured a tall spire and secondary tower. In 1938, the New England Hurricane destroyed the tall spire (a similar event occurred to many New England Churches, including Old North in Boston). Even without the steeple, the church remains as a great architectural treasure in town.

Dr. Aretus Rising House // 1854

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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.

Elihu Kent Jr. House // 1787

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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.

New Kent Memorial Library // 1972

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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.

Old Kent Memorial Library // 1899

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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.


Suffield Academy – Fuller Hall // 1873 & 1953

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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.

Second Baptist Church, Suffield // 1840

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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.

Bryon Loomis House // c.1855

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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.

Charles Loomis House // 1862

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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.

John W. Loomis House // c.1840

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This stunning home sits on Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, and was apparently built as a center-chimney home in the 18th century. By the 1840s, it was purchased by John Wells Loomis (1805-1879), and altered to fit the then-fashionable Greek Revival style, replacing the center chimney with two smaller chimneys, new pilasters were added to the corners and at the entry. John Loomis was the head of the Loomis family which made a fortune in the tobacco industry in Suffield, rolling and shipping products as far away as California. He operated his cigar business in a large warehouse, now gone, behind the house. Before his death, John Loomis built his son George a house nearby, knowing that his son would carry on the business, which he did until a couple years after his father’s death, until he sold the business and moved to New Haven. The Loomis House is one of the finest examples of a Greek Revival residence in the community.

Sears Stable – The Vincent Clubhouse // c.1856

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Located behind the David Sears Mansion (now Greek Consulate) on Beacon Street, this handsome utilitarian structure fronts Brimmer Street in Beacon Hill and predates the building it adjoins. The two stables and attached caretaker’s residence was built around 1856 for David Sears, who lived farther down Beacon Street, but also owned other buildings on the street which fronted the Public Garden. He built this stable in the Flat of Beacon Hill, an area west of Charles Street in what Samuel Eliot Morrison coined, “the horsey end of town” for its prevalence of stables and carriage houses. The architect is not known, but the handsome structure features bays of shallow, recessed brick arches and brick dentil courses, showing the importance of good design even for uses such as a stable. The building later became space for furniture storage and an ancillary apartment to the adjacent mansion, until 1957, when the it was acquired by the Vincent Club, a women’s organization with the mission of raising money for the Vincent Memorial Hospital whose mission was to treat the “diseases of women.” Even though the Vincent Hospital merged with Mass. General Hospital in 1988, the Vincent Club remains in this former stable as its home-base and continues to carry out its mission to advance the field of women’s healthcare.

Swansea Town Hall // 1891

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The Swansea Town Hall in Swansea, Massachusetts, is one of the most unusual and architecturally eclectic town hall buildings in New England, and was a gift to the community from a wealthy resident. Built in 1891 from plans by Boston architect, James Merrill Brown, the building is constructed of randomly laid rubblestone with brownstone trim with a massive pyrammidal slate roof and offset turret and tower containing a historic clock. The building was the gift of benefactors, Frank Shaw Stevens and Elizabeth Case Stevens, who lived down the street in the town’s largest mansion. The Stevens’ donated the building with the stipulation that the building was to be available to every and any religious society desiring to hold funeral services there and to also provide space for a public library. The town obliged. The space was outgrown and the Stevens’ would later donate the town’s public library next door and a church, that also held funeral services for the community. The building has been home to the Town Hall since 1891.

First Congregational Church of Sharon // 1839

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Sharon, Massachusetts, is a small suburban community south of Boston that is lesser known than its neighbors, but the community has some great old buildings! The Town of Sharon was originally part of a 1637 land grant given by the Dorchester Proprietors to encourage new settlement in areas southward. In 1726, the lands of the present towns of Sharon, Canton and Stoughton, were separated from Dorchester and called the Stoughton Territory. Settlers in present-day Sharon found it difficult to attend mandated church services centered around present-day Stoughton and petitioned the General Court in 1739 to set off as a separate precinct. The request was granted and the Second Precinct was established, and incorporated as Stoughtonham in 1765, changing its name in 1783 to Sharon, named after the Sharon Plain in Palestine. In 1813, the local congregationalists split due to theological differences and some formed a Unitarian church. The Congregationalists moved down the street and built a new church in 1822 which was destroyed by fire in 1838 and replaced a year later by this edifice. Built in 1839 the First Congregational Church of Sharon is a vernacular and well-preserved example of a Greek Revival church building in the Doric order with towering pilastered steeple, monumental portico supported by four fluted Doric columns, and flushboard siding. The Congregational Church retains an original bell cast by the The Revere Copper Company of nearby Canton.