Baltic Inn, Baltic, Conn. 1.

Baltic Inn, Baltic, Conn. 1.

A well dressed man in a boater and a dog pose outside a large frame building with fanciful architectural detail. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were promptly sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The eastern Connecticut village of Baltic became an important industrial center from the water-powered milling and production of cotton and other textiles on the Shetucket River during the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th. The village is located just north of the city of Norwich. With its whimsical painted sign and scalloped eave detailing, the Baltic Inn appears to have been something of a local landmark. The projecting bays, with their cobblestone piers, Colonial Revival columns and picturesque clay tile roofs, may have been early 20th-century additions to an existing early-19th century building.