Moses Beach House, Wallingford, Connecticut:
A luxurious Italianate villa once stood three floors above 86 North Main Street in Wallingford. Back in 1850, the perfectly symmetrical mansion was built at the direction of famed architect, Henry Austin. It featured a columned veranda with thick candelabras, chamfered windows and vegetal decorations. The home was made for Moses Yale Beach, a descendant of Wallingford’s founding families. His ancestral line included Elihu Yale, a major manufacturer of bayonets during the American Revolution, an early benefactor of Yale University, and a large landowner in Wallingford.
Moses Beach was born and raised in Wallingford, but he grew up without his mother who died when he was four months old. He married Nancy Day Beach, the sister of Benjamin Day – founder of the New York Sun newspaper. Originally a farmer, a cabinet-maker and a machine inventor, Beach eventually joined his brother-in-law at the New York Sun. As publisher, Beach headed the first penny press newspaper in the United States, which pioneered the reporting of crime and human-interest stories.
By 1846, he became sole owner of the New York Sun and the first founder of a print syndicate called the Associated Press. He entrusted the Associated Press to his sons in retirement, and he lived in on North Main Street until his death at 68 years old (January 15, 1800 – July 18, 1868). Beach was remembered as the wealthiest person from Wallingford, a philanthropist, a Union loyalist, and a liberal patriot.
Read more about Moses Yale Beach and the formation of the Associated Press: https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2021/05/24/175-years-of-associated-press/
Here’s an intriguing story of Moses Beach acting as a secret emissary during the Mexican-American War: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/moses-yale-beach-polks-secret-emissary-to-mexico/.
Around 1920, the Moses Beach House became known as St. George’s Inn. It was operated by The Choate School until 1958 to accommodate parents and visitors. The house was partially demolished and renovated in the 1960s to serve as a bank. The property was bought by the Gouveia family in 2021 and converted to a mixed use building with storefronts and apartments.
Visit the Wallingford Historical Society Facebook Page
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