[2] The Civic Institutions Historic District is located on the western fringe of the developed core of New London.

On the south side of Garfield Avenue stands the former almshouse, a brick building with two wings joined by a central hyphen.

[2] On the north side of Garfield Avenue, closer to Colman, is the original Memorial Hospital building, built in 1892, with a wing added the following year.

[2] Facing Colman Street is the Mitchell Isolation Hospital, a single-story Colonial Revival structure completed in 1914 as a facility for segregating patients with highly infectious diseases, including smallpox and tuberculosis.

[2] Like the other buildings in the district, its construction was funded through a philanthropic bequest, this time from Annie Olivia Mitchell, a daughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany who had married into a wealthy local family.

Architecturally, they are well-preserved specimens of institutional versions of the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles popular at the time.