North Branford Hall

Usually, it's easier to find out what an ambiguous Connecticut building once was than what it currently is. It's just the way memory works here. There's a store in my neighborhood that is moving a few blocks down. They have a large sign in their window announcing that their new location will be the former location of the business that occupied that space fourteen years ago. (See also: if you own a house in Connecticut, it will always be referred to as the home of the previous owners. Until you move.)

When I looked for the origin of this little building, however, that rule was flipped on its head. I found out that North Branford Hall recently housed the North Branford Senior Center, and that it might soon be used by a food pantry and a local library association. I read that the Totoket Grange meets here, or did meet here not too long ago. But as to the question of when it was built, or why, there was nothing.

But eventually, I found something. Perhaps unsurprisingly, North Branford Hall was originally a schoolhouse, dating from 1870 (though one website claims it was built as early as 1830.) It was later used as the town hall. The cemetery next to it was created when the burial ground of the church across the street ran out of room.

It is described simply as a "plain rectangular [building] with Victorian-era embellishments," but I think it's somewhat more distinctive than that. Or maybe that's just because it took me so long to track down its past.

Gather Ye Schoolhouses

When I started this blog I'd never noticed an old Connecticut schoolhouse, aside from this one and this one. The first one that really caught my attention was the one in Beacon Falls, shown here, which I included in this article. And now, as I've mentioned here before, the schoolhouses just keep accumulating. (I think this makes schoolhouse post number 28, and schoolhouse number...I don't even want to count.) Here are a few that I've been saving up, from all around the state.

(From top: Southington; North Branford; Prospect; Branford; Union; Union)

North Branford

Once when I was 18 some random dude on the street in New York asked me where I'd been all his life. I have the same question for North Branford.

I thought the town would be just like Branford, which it is north of, or Durham, which it is south of. And it is a little like those places. But it has its own unique North Branford-y thing happening. And it's not one of those towns people talk about. I would never have thought it could be an untapped vein of strangeness, or a sudden source of happiness, like finding $20 in your other coat.

Oh, and in case you wondering what the heck that thing in the picture is, I will tell you. It's North Branford's first gas station. The website of the Totoket Historical Society, which maintains this and more of the town's historic buildings, says: "It dates back to the 1920s...It is a small, hexagonal shaped building with windows on an angle so that the attendant could look up and down the road for customers while seated inside."

It does not say that this is the oldest gas station in Connecticut or the oldest preserved gas station in Connecticut or the only surviving gas station in Connecticut of this type. But I can find no other structure claiming to be any of these things, so...this might be it.

And now that I've written that I will start seeing hexagonal pre-1920s gas stations in their original condition everywhere I go.

(By the way the lovely barn behind the gas station is a museum.)