Today, Olmsted Street, near the central business district of East Hartford, is in a very built-up area, but over a century ago tobacco was still grown in the immediate vicinity. According to An Architectural History of East Hartford, Connecticut (1989), edited by Doris Darling Sherrow, page 195, when James Mulligan (1848-1920), a railroad engineer from Waterbury, purchased the land where the house at 107 Olmsted Street stands today in 1893 from Henry G. Beaumont, the latter (who is listed in the 1885 Hartford County Directory as a farmer) reserved the right to continue growing his tobacco crop on the property until September 15 of that year or until it was harvested, whichever came first. The house that Mulligan, an immigrant from Glasgow, Scotland, erected and occupied until his death features a spindle rail porch with a starburst design at the front entryway.