Connecticut Architecture. Christopher Wigren
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century.4 The land provided materials with which to build. Its topography influenced where people settled and how they communicated between settlements. As far as they were able, the people who lived here shaped the land. Where they have ceased to maintain the land in its altered state, the land has reasserted itself, undoing much of their attempts to dominate nature.
Thrust up by geological upheavals, scraped down by rain and rivers and glaciers, flooded and uncovered by sea waters, the land of Connecticut as we know it emerged from the ice ages about ten thousand years ago as a gently hilly territory, abundantly watered by rivers and streams draining southward to Long Island Sound, with fertile soil that supported thick forests (figure 4).
FIGURE 4. Geological regions of Connecticut. Map from Michael Bell, The Face of Connecticut, 1985. Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection
Running through the middle of Connecticut is a broad valley that begins in Massachusetts and meets Long Island Sound at New Haven. As far south as Middletown, the Connecticut River runs through this central valley (figure 5), but then the river breaks through the valley wall and turns eastward to finish its run to the Sound through a narrower passage. North of Rocky Hill, the valley was the bed of a prehistoric glacial lake, whose silted deposits of alluvial soil provide fertile farmland. This level land—rich, easily worked, nearly free of stone, and easily built upon—attracted the first Europeans, who built prosperous agricultural communities like South Windsor (place 2). Flourishing farms, along with easy transport, both on the level ground and along the Connecticut River, fostered the rise of cities: Hartford and Middletown on the Connecticut River, plus New Haven at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River on Long Island Sound.
FIGURE 5. Connecticut River, Cromwell. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation
FIGURE 6. Highlands hills and valleys, Cornwall. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation
To the east and west of the central valley lie uplands with long, streamlined hills, mostly running north and south, and fertile, if stony, soil (figure 6). The hilly topography influenced development, with early settlers preferring the hilltops for their good drainage and what they considered more healthful air. Transportation and communications follow similar lines; even a modern highway map shows more, and better, roads running north–south than east–west.
As upland forests were cleared, stones deposited by the glaciers worked their way to the surface and had to be removed from fields. In many cases farmers simply tossed stones into piles lining the edges of their fields. A more labor-intensive approach was to build stone walls, which took up less space and could serve as dividers between fields (figure 7). These walls have become a widely recognized feature of the New England landscape, and the varying types of stone and methods of construction highlight regional differences.5
Farming was more difficult in the uplands than in the central valley, but it could support families, and even be profitable (Cyrus Wilson Farm, place 25). With the opening of the American West and improvements in transportation that made it possible to import agricultural products from other places, general farming declined, and the land so laboriously cleared of its forests grew up in trees again. In addition to agriculture, the uplands offered stone for building, ores for mining, and timber for building or charcoal making.
The uplands contain two smaller river systems. In the east are the Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers, which join at Norwich to form the Thames (pronounced with a soft th and a long a). To the west is the Housatonic, which is joined by the Naugatuck at Derby. Although navigable historically, these streams were narrower and faster than the Connecticut River. Easily and profitably dammed for waterpower, the uplands water systems fostered the industrial development that transformed Connecticut in the nineteenth century. Under the influence of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the Quinebaug-Shetucket corridor, in the east, concentrated on textiles. In the west, the Housatonic-Naugatuck region became known for metals manufacturing, particularly brass (see the metals factories described in places 35, 36). Dependent on waterpower, new industrial communities grew up in the valleys, creating a layered landscape of older, agricultural hill towns and newer, lowland, mill towns.
FIGURE 7. Stone walls, Connecticut Route 165, Griswold. M. Scott
FIGURE 8. Marsh, Milford. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation
FIGURE 9. Mystic River, Groton. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation
Along the state’s southern border is Long Island Sound, sheltered from the open ocean by its namesake island. The shoreline’s extensive marshes proved valuable for Connecticut’s people as well, providing habitat for shellfish and fowl for food, and grasses for a variety of uses (figure 8).
The indented coastline offers many small harbors and river mouths, like Mystic’s, which fostered maritime industries including fishing, trade, and shipbuilding (figure 9). Larger harbors at Bridgeport, New Haven, and New London became ports, but these were overshadowed by New York and Boston. It is often forgotten that even inland towns such as Middletown, Hartford, Derby, and Norwich all were busy ports before they became industrial cities, and that steamship travel on the Connecticut River continued through the first third of the twentieth century, bringing traffic and commerce to river towns like Essex (place 52). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, evidence of this water-based economy has largely disappeared, as shipping has shrunk to a fraction of its earlier importance, railroad lines and highways have cut towns off from their waterfronts, and maritime traffic has been mostly reduced to private pleasure craft and oil tankers.
In sum, Connecticut is topographically varied, while modest in scale (figure 10). There are no real mountains, hills and valleys are relatively gentle, and harbors small. There are few sweeping views, and scenery is bucolic rather than dramatic. Second-growth forests further restrict the scenery, leaving few wide, distant views or open areas. This gives the state a divided quality, broken (apart from the central valley) into small segments where the inhabitants of one town are isolated from their neighbors in the next. It also gives it an intimate quality, in which humans are rarely overwhelmed, but rather feel at home.
FIGURE 10. Mount Riga, Salisbury. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation
HISTORY
How the people of Connecticut have built is inextricably intertwined with how they lived their lives—economically, socially, politically, culturally. What follows is a brief sketch of the state’s historical and architectural development. It is meant to provide a general background for the one hundred places that follow.6
Beginnings: Prehistory to 1730
There is no written record for most of human history in what we now call Connecticut.7 What we know about the