: Windham Center Historic District is a area in the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Windham, Connecticut Windham is a town in Windham County, Connecticut, United States. It contains the former city of Willimantic as well as the boroughs of Windham Center, North Windham, and South Windham. Willimantic, an incorporated city since 1893, was consol ...

, that is designated as a historic district. The district was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1979. At the time, it included 61 contributing buildings out of a total of 78 buildings, and it included 2 other contributing sites.

General description

Windham Center is a village in the New England town of Windham in northeast Connecticut. The District is centered on the

village green A village green is a common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for gathering cattle t ...

. During the town's first 125 years, this district was the most thickly settled part of the surrounding area. The village was selected as the seat of Windham County, when the latter was created in 1726, and prospered from the legal activity around the courthouse that was constructed. In the following three decades Windham Center grew to be a prosperous administrative, commercial and agricultural center. The village green today is bordered by the Congregational Church, the Post Office, a former inn, multiple houses, and the original Greek Revival style Windham Bank (built in 1832), which was converted to the Windham Free Library in 1896. Four streets issue from the green: Scotland Rd (Route 14) to the east, Windham Center Road (Route 203) to the south, Plains Road to the west, and North Road (Routes 14 and 203) to the northwest. The village remains essentially rural. Windham was the home of two of Connecticut's Revolutionary pioneers,

Eliphalet Dyer Eliphalet Dyer (September 14, 1721 – May 13, 1807) was an American lawyer, jurist, and statesman from Windham, Connecticut. He was a delegate for Connecticut to many sessions of the Continental Congress, where he signed the 1774 Continental As ...

and Jedediah Elderkin; of craftsman J. Alden Weir; and of legal scholar

Zephaniah Swift Zephaniah Swift (February 27, 1759 – September 27, 1823) was an eighteenth-century American author, judge, lawyer, law professor, diplomat and politician from Windham, Connecticut. He served as a U.S. Representative from Connecticut and State ...

. The first volume of Swift's work, ''A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut'' (1795), was the first legal treatise in America and concerns the constitution of the state and differences between English and American

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipres ...

References

External links

* {{National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut Historic districts in Windham County, Connecticut Italianate architecture in Connecticut Windham, Connecticut Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in Windham County, Connecticut