Ivoryton, Connecticut is positioned in Connecticut Ivoryton, Connecticut Location Roughly bounded by Main Street, North Main Street, Oak Street, Blake Street, Summit Street, Park Road, and Comstock Avenue, Ivoryton, Essex, Connecticut Ivoryton Historic District, the historic precinct in the village, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 15, 2014. Ivoryton is roughly bounded by Main Street, North Main Street, Oak Street, Blake Street, Summit Street, Park Road, and Comstock Avenue. The region is known as a "well-preserved example of a nineteenth-century business town" and a world center of the ivory industry. The region became industrialized when Comstock, Cheney & Company, an ivory import company established by Samuel Merritt Comstock, an Ivoryton native, and his partner George A.
Cheney in the 1860s was established there. The precinct was one of the a several industrial areas in the Connecticut River Valley established late nineteenth century, and is also historically momentous as a center for immigrants from Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Poland, who lived in worker housing areas throughout Ivoryton. Pratt, Read & Company was positioned just a several miles away from Comstock, Cheney & Company along the Connecticut River, and these two biggest American ivory manufacturers "commanded a monopoly on all ivory manufacturing in the United States." The region thrived between 1860 and 1938, and at its height the region provided jobs to and homed up to 600 workers. The National Register of Historical Places states: "The historic precinct consists of early Colonial structures representing the agrarian village before its industrialized transformation, mid- to late-nineteenth-century ivory refining and manufacturing buildings, high-style Victorian homes for business executives, modest vernacular homes and apartements for factory workers, and enhance buildings such as churches, a postal service, business store, library, and a town meeting hall.
Although some of the factory buildings have been demolished, the industry-defining bleach homes are gone, many homes have been remodeled, and the village itself sustained damage in a flood in 1982, Ivoryton's historic character remains endured as an example of a prepared improve not unlike more formalized 'company towns' in an trade unique to the Connecticut River Valley.
National Register of Historic Places listings in Middlesex County, Connecticut
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