Bank Street Historic District (Waterbury, Connecticut)
Connecticut
Waterbury's most ornate commercial building was built for elite tenants and ended up housing a piano tuner and a billiards parlor.
Four brick buildings stand attached on the east side of Bank Street in Waterbury, and the largest of them is covered in owls. That one is the Griggs Building, put up in eighteen eighty-four. Its facade carries terra cotta panels with festoons, spiral foliage, and small carved owls flanking the fourth-story arches. Stained glass borders edge the upper windows. A steeply pitched hipped roof adds a fifth story, pierced by gabled dormers finished in fish-scale slate. Queen Anne detail like this usually went on houses, not storefronts. Henry Griggs hired Robert Hill, one of the city's most accomplished architects, and expected the address to become the most desirable in Waterbury. It never happened. He could not attract that kind of tenant. Soon after it opened, a hotel moved in from a few blocks away. The ground floor went to a piano tuner, a photographer's studio, and a billiards parlor.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
Griggs had apparently hoped the building would be among the most desirable locations in Waterbury, but he was never able to attract that kind of tenant.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
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