Essex Square did not exist in its present form until after the British attack on Essex harbor on April 8, 1814, when 28 ships were destroyed. Changes in the streets leading to the river, the construction of a large new ropewalk, and a shift in the center of business created a new intersection that became Essex Square. Much of downtown Essex Village still resembles its appearance in the 1820s, with original structures remaining recognizable despite changing businesses and styles. In the mid 1890s, Edwin Hunt built the Hunt Building, where he ran a furniture and undertaking establishment, reflecting a period when cabinet-making and coffin-making made those trades compatible. Trolleys became an important part of life in Essex after the Shore Line Electric Railway Company began service there in 1910, and by 1913 lines carried passengers through valley towns into the center of Essex over a bridge in Middle Cove, with travel possible from New Haven to Chester and from Old Saybrook to New London; in the 1920s, the fare from Essex to Ivoryton was four cents. At Main and Pratt Streets, a one-story building erected in 1818 on a triangular lot served as a drug store and later housed other enterprises, with later additions accommodating merchants including Morris Hall's piano shop, Niles Gladding's General Store, successive drug stores, and more recently dress shops. In 1814, Benjamin Williams built a two-story house at the site where Talbots later stood, before North Main Street and Pratt Street existed, during the period when business conditions were shaping Essex Square. The house later served as a residence, doctors' offices, and the first lending library of the Essex Library Association before the property was sold in 1925 for the construction of the Essex Square Theatre, a building for a movie theatre, stores, and offices that drew audiences for nearly fifty years; since the 1970s, Talbots has occupied the building. The brick Arkin Block, built in 1920 at North Main Street and Pratt Street, housed the A&P, and the original house from that site was moved up the street and is now a retail store.