Middletown Upper Houses Historic District

The Portland Brownstone Quarries are a set of historic quarries in Portland, Connecticut. The brownstone mined from these quarries was an important source for construction in the latter half of the 19th century. The stone from these quarries was used in a number of landmark buildings in Chicago, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New Haven, Connecticut, and Hartford. The site was listed as a National Historic Landmark, which also placed it on the National Register of Historic Places, on May 16, 2000.

Portland is a census-designated place (CDP) comprising the primary village and adjacent residential land in the town of Portland, Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. It is in the southwest part of the town, bordered to the west and south by the Connecticut River, which forms the border with Cromwell to the west and Middletown to the south. The Portland CDP extends north along Main Street (Connecticut Route 17A) to its junction with Gospel Lane (Connecticut Route 17) at Fogelmarks Corners, and the eastern extent of the CDP is at Rose Hill Road and Collins Hill Road. The CDP includes the neighborhood of Gildersleeve in the north. As of the 2020 census, the CDP had a population of 5,813, out of 9,384 in the entire town of Portland.

Portland is a town in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. The town is part of the Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region. The population was 9,384 at the 2020 census. The town center is listed as a census-designated place (CDP). It is situated across the Connecticut River from Middletown. Brownstone quarried in Portland was used in the construction of Hartford's Old State House in 1796. The vast majority of the brownstone buildings in Connecticut (see College Row at Wesleyan University and the Long Walk at Trinity College) as well as the famous brownstones in New York City were built with brownstone from Portland's quarries. Later, one of the quarries was transformed into an adventure park in the summer months featuring zip lines, cliff diving and scuba locations. About half of the town's perimeter is made up of the Connecticut River. The town has eight marinas and boat clubs as well as three 18-hole golf courses.

The Joseph Williams Octagon House and the Gilbert Stancliff Octagon House are once-identical historic mid-1850s octagon houses located next to each other at 26 and 28 Marlborough Street in Portland, Connecticut. Constructed of Portland brownstone in the 1850s, they are distinctive as the only known pair of little-altered octagon houses in the state. The pair of houses, also known as the Octagon House Pair, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

The Main Street Historic District in Cromwell, Connecticut is roughly bounded by Nooks Hill Rd., Prospect Hill Rd., Wall and West Sts. and New Ln., and Stevens Ln. and Main St. It includes two town greens (Valour Green and Memorial Green), historic homes and the Cromwell Historical Society. The historic district is primarily linear and starts from "Patriots Corner" (a grassy area at the corner of Main and Wall Streets with several memorials) and runs north along Main Street (Route 99) past the Memorial Green at Wall Street. Towards the northern end, the district widens to encompass both Main Street and Prospect Hill Road until about Nooks Hill Road, including the Valour Green. The district comprises 66 contributing buildings and structures and has an area of 130 acres (53 ha). The district is notable in capturing the transformation of a rural 18th-century village center into a 20th-century town, with representative architecture from every major architectural style seen between 1750 and 1935. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.Cromwell was settled in the 17th century, and remained predominantly agricultural in character well into the 19th century. It had a small but locally important port on the Connecticut River, which declined in the 19th century, and Main Street afterward became the principal economic and civic area of the town. Main Street was part of a major turnpike route, connecting Hartford and Old Saybrook, and is where the town's early civic buildings were located.

Holy Apostles College and Seminary is a Catholic seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. It was founded in 1956 on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) property in Cromwell by Eusebe M. Menard to provide a program of education and formation for men intending to enter the priesthood.

Elmcrest Hospital, later St. Francis Care Behavioral Health, was a small psychiatric facility in Portland, Connecticut. Opened in 1942, the campus incorporated three historic mansions, including a childhood home of 1800s businesswoman Elizabeth Jarvis Colt. The facility was purchased by Saint Francis Hospital in 1997, and in 1998, the hospital underwent increased scrutiny when an 11-year-old patient died while being restrained by an employee. In 2003, inpatient services at the campus were discontinued, and patients were relocated to the Saint Francis Mount Sinai campus. Hartford Hospital purchased the campus in 2003 and continued operating the outpatient and partial hospitalization services for children and teens at the site through its affiliate the Rushford Center. Rushford discontinued operations at the site c. 2006. A redevelopment plan that would have demolished two of the three historic homes was proposed in 2006, however the original effort had stalled by 2009. On February 1, 2018, the Portland Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to approve the Brainerd Place development for the site. As of 2022, the project is expected to include a mix of apartments and retail, while adaptively redeveloping the three historic homes in place.

The Mattabesset River as delineated on present-day maps flows out of Harts Ponds in the town of Berlin and travels 16.1 miles (25.9 km) east to the Connecticut River, passing Kensington and later forming the boundary between Middletown and Cromwell.Further south, the Coginchaug River (or "winding meadow") flows from an upland meadow in Durham, northwards to the Mattabesset just upstream of that river's junction with the Connecticut. This river was the route to the portage place, located near Palmer Field, just below Sowheag's main stronghold at Indian Hill. Since it was the old western boundary of the incorporated City of Middletown, it was also called the West River, and also, for no known reasons, it was given other names, including the Sebethe River and the Arrawanna River. Presumably the word Mattabeseck was never considered properly euphonious, and various local individuals tried to improve on the name poetically.

The Marlborough Street Historic District encompasses one of the finest collections of 19th-century residential architecture in Portland, Connecticut. Extending along Marlborough Street (Connecticut Route 66) east of Main Street, it includes twelve houses built between 1847 and 1900 in a variety of architectural styles. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

The Coginchaug River in Connecticut, with a watershed including 39 sq mi of forests, pastures, farmland, industrial, and commercial areas, is the main tributary of the Mattabesset River. It is 16.1 mi long, and the river flows northwards from a point approximately 1.8 mi south of the Durham line in Guilford, Connecticut, into Durham and then Middlefield, meeting the Mattabesset in Middletown, about 0.8 miles (1.3 km) upstream of the Connecticut River. The name "Coginchaug" comes from a local Native American name for the Durham area and it was the original name for the town. It has been said to mean "The Great Swamp", and is a reference to the meadows found in the central part of town. In 2006, the Coginchaug was among Connecticut's 85 waterways cited to be of "lower quality", in view of the elevated levels of bacteria, including E. coli. Currently, efforts are being made by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to reduce the number of bacteria introduced into the river from untreated sewage, sanitary sewer overflow, agricultural runoff, leaking septic tanks, etc.

The Indian Hill Avenue Historic District encompasses an 18th-century colonial shipbuilding village, overlaid on a historic and prehistoric Native American settlement, in Portland, Connecticut. Extending along Indian Hill Avenue north of Portland, the district includes a collection of 18th and early 19th-century buildings, and extensive archaeological evidence of Native American occupation (some supported by colonial-era and later documentation). The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

The Arrigoni Bridge, also known locally as the Portland Bridge is a steel through arch bridge carrying Route 66 and Route 17 across the Connecticut River, connecting Middletown, Connecticut, to Portland, Connecticut. When it opened in 1938, the 1,200 feet (370 m) bridge was the most expensive bridge ever built in Connecticut, at a cost of $3.5 million. Its two distinctive 600 feet (180 m) steel arches have the longest span length of any bridge in the state. The bridge has an average daily traffic of 33,600.It was named after state legislator Charles J. Arrigoni, who promoted the project. Arrigoni served in the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1933 to 1936 and in the Connecticut State Senate from 1937 to 1940.