"With every old house, you wish the walls could tell their stories."

Located in downtown Madison there is a quaint, little street called Wall Street.  Wall Street houses many different businesses including a nail salon and a travel agency. One of the unique qualities of these businesses is that they are situated in residential homes that have been converted, rather than newly constructed office buildings.

Wall Street also contains one of the oldest homes in town, the Phineas Meigs house, built in 1733. It previously held the British Shoppe for 15 years.  Now, the company Gulick & Spradlin LLC is taking its place, occupying the space that sat empty for the past couple of years.

Gulick & Spradlin LLC are renovation contractors that specialize in historic properties all around Central and Shoreline Connecticut. They have restored three houses in Madison, The Shelley House circa 1710 on the Boston Post Road, The Field House circa 1722 on Greenhill Road, and The Murray House circa 1690 on Scotland Road.

Owners Peter Gulick and John Spradlin, whom joined forces back in 2002, made these projects possible. Along with complete restorations of historic homes, Gulick and Spradlin offer consulting and design work that vary from 17^th century homes to mid-20^th century buildings.

Since 2002, Harvey Treat, Shane Walden, Stephen Grey and David Ives have joined Gulick and Spradlin. The team continues to grow with the recent addition of Travis Gulick, Peter's son, who has worked many summers and became full time in July.

Travis, a recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, with honors in Historic Preservation, will be bringing his knowledge and ideas to keep the renovations accurate to their time period.

Homes built as recently as 50 years ago can be considered historic, and Travis will be helping us explore homes from this period and earlier. It only takes 50 years for the National Register for Historic Places to consider a home to be historic. Travis will expand the business into all types of homes built throughout history.

The Phineas Meigs house, which is on the National Register for Historic Places, is the perfect place for Gulick & Spradlin LLC to call home. With every old house, you wish the walls could tell their stories. The house is named after Phineas Meigs, who was an elderly veteran of the French and Indian War, as well as a local militiaman.

In 1733, when the house was built, Madison was known as East Guilford and would be until 1826, when Madison was officially established. In 1782, Phineas Meigs stood his post as a militia officer at the age of 74 and responded to a little known Guilford battle during the British incursion along the shore where he lost his life.

Today, the hat he was wearing during battle is preserved at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford, CT.  Phineas Meigs was the last known casualty of the Revolution War in Connecticut.

You can find Gulick & Spradlin, LLC at gulickspradlin.com and on Facebook.

Contributed by Gulick & Spradlin LLC.