Built in 1854 on High Street in Hartford, the Isham-Terry House is an Italian Villa-style home that was once surrounded by a residential neighborhood, now lost to urban renewal. Many drivers may notice this distinctive house, standing alone in its isolated position, as they go by on I-84. It was built for Ebenezer Roberts, a partner in a wholesale grocery firm with the Keney Brothers. In 1896 it was bought by Dr. Oliver K. Isham, who used it as both a home and doctor’s office. He lived there with his two sisters, Julia and Charlotte. The sisters continued to live there after his death, despite the vast changes to the neighborhood, remaining into the 1970s. In 1980, they willed the house to the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, and today it is a historic house museum.
The house is notable for a variety of features. The tower to the rear was a later addition and has a third-floor window that awkwardly intersects with the main roof of the house. The house also has intricate cast iron work on the exterior balconies, ordered from the Pheonix Iron Works catalog of 1853 (Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney, two young machinists working for this Hartford company, would start their own company in 1860). The doorway features elaborate columns and stained glass. The inside of the house is virtually unchanged, remaining as the sisters left it, and thus represents a unique survival of a Victorian house interior, even including Dr. Isham’s undisturbed office.