Cornwall Center

At the first division of the town of Cornwall in 1738, lots were laid out in a line starting near the center of the new township.  George Holloway, who would become known as Cornwall's most prominent personality for its first 16 years, built his house nearby.
When Cornwall residents petitioned in 1740 for the right to be recognized as a town and as a parish, the General Assembly appointed a committee--selected from towns other than Cornwall to provide impartiality--to choose a site for Cornwall's meeting house.  They selected a location "on the westward side of a highway that runs northward and southward . . . about twenty rods north of Mr. George Holloway's frame" near the crossroads of Town Street and the Sharon-Goshen Road, which was to become a major thoroughfare.
Cornwall's 20th century historian, Edward Starr, noted that Cornwall Center eventually acquired "a Green, two Congregational churches, school, store, post office, stocks, whipping post, pound for cattle, and the residences of the minister, doctor and lawyer." The Green provided the parade ground for the militia--George Holloway was a captain--and the location of town gatherings on important public occasions.  The Emmons Tavern, built in 1758 to accommodate growing numbers of travelers, displayed "large massive scrolls and roses of carved work" ornamenting the doorways and doors "wrought with curvilinear styles and panels." The Center's schoolhouse, eventually to become District Three, was the first in town.
In the wake of the "great schism" within Cornwall's Congregational church, the First Church abandoned Cornwall Center in 1790 and built a new church in Cornwall Village.
Supplanting the First Church in Cornwall Center was the Methodist Episcopal Church, gathered in 1808. But the church was virtually the only newcomer. Otherwise, the Center gradually declined. Between 1800 and 1900, the community lost its post office, store, enforcement apparatus, many learned professionals, and most of its Green. The schoolhouse closed around 1900. It was sold and moved before World War I, certifying the depopulation of the village. After the war, summer residents, perhaps attracted by the lovely view over Cornwall Village and the hills beyond, brought and reconstructed some of the remaining old houses.

This 1868 view shows the weir, or dam, that diverted river water into an east
bank canal to produce power for industry.
 

In this view of Cornwall Center, the District Three schoolhouse is at left, with the Methodist Episcopal Church across the road. Cornwall Village's First
Congregational Church is visible in the distance at left.
 

West Cornwall

Where Mill Brook plunges into the rapids of the Housatonic River sits the village of West Cornwall, below left, from the western bank. Known today for its covered bridge, an icon of rural New England, West Cornwall is also an emblem of the early industrial revolution in Connecticut's rural hinterland.
The tiny riverbank settlement originally known as Hart's Bridge received the name West Cornwall in 1841 when the Housatonic Railroad reached it. It rapidly became the business center of the town of Cornwall, acquiring a post office and a general store. These were followed by a feed store and mill; a drug store; a tin shop, a school, and a blacksmith shop; a millinery; a barbershop; and a hotel. To this day, West Cornwall's architecture resembles more a 19th century mill village than a colonial town center.
West Cornwall boasted small industries typical of the early industrial era. An iron furnace operated through the middle years of the 19th century. The Gold Sanitary Heater Company was formed in 1875 and manufactured items with names like the Gold's Patent steam heater and the Magic Heater stove.
The settlement's largest employer was the Mallinson Shear Shop, established in West Cornwall in the 1850s. The company produced for both local and wider markets; its records show orders ranging from a single pair of shears to 400-gross pairs. Like many early Connecticut enterprises, the Shear Shop was linked with other activities, including a dam on the river, a foundry, and a gristmill. In 1860 its employees included many skilled English craft workers who circulated among the shear shops in different regions.
While these industries declined in the late 1800s, West Cornwall remained Cornwall's commercial center. Bertie Cartwright, who arrived in West Cornwall as a young woman in 1908 to work for attorney and postmaster Leonard J. Nickerson, recalled many years later that businesses included the Mansion House hotel, with bar-room attached and livery stable in the rear, a barber shop, a grocery store, a plumbing and kitchen-utensils business, and a general store selling "meat, groceries, clothing, books, shoes, and almost anything one might then ask for." To the young Bertie Cartwright, West Cornwall seemed a bit antiquated but nonetheless friendly. "Everybody around here was either related to or connected in some way with everybody else, the Smith and Cochrane families predominating."