Built in 1878 on Broad Street Green in Wethersfield for James R. Anderson, who founded Anderson Farms. It was later passed to his son and grandson. Gothic Revival Houses of this type are referred to as “Carpenter Gothic.” The Anderson Farm Stand can be found in front of the house in season.
Built on South Main Street in Suffield for Henry Phelps Kent, a tobacco merchant, in 1872. It was designed in the Second Empire style by local architect John Mead. Later, for almost sixty years, it the home of Samuel Reid Spencer, the prominent merchant and philanthrophist who had bought and restored the King House Museum next door. Today the house has been restored as a bed-and-breakfast called Spencer on Main.
One of the few surviving homes built in the nineteenth century in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood. It was built on Forest Street in 1875 for Charles Boardman Smith, of the Smith Worthington Saddlery Company, and was designed by Richard M. Upjohn in the High Victorian Gothic style. It shares similarities with Upjohn’s Connecticut State Capitol building and the (now demolished) West Middle School of 1873.
Built in 1861, on Main Street in Wethersfield, for Edward Robbins, who owned the Johnson & Robbins seed company. Charles C. Hart was connected to this company for fourteen years before he began his own business in the 1892. As the Chas. C. Hart Seed Co. grew, it eventually moved into the old offices and warehouses of the Johnson & Hart Company, and remains in the same location today, currently in a 1955 brick complex just south of the Robbins House.
As a plaque in front of the house indicates, it stands at the former site of Nathaniel Stillman’s Tavern. When Washington had his famous conference with the Comte de Rochambeau, just down the street in the Webb House, in May of 1781, the Stillman Tavern housed the French staff.
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Built in 1876 on Main Street in Hartford for two brothers from the family that owned the Cheney Silk Mills in Manchester. The R. and F. Cheney Building was designed by the famous architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and represents an early work in his distinctive Richardsonian Romanesque style, later exemplified in the (now gone) Marshall Field’s Wholesale Store, built in Chicago in 1885-1887. The Cheney Block is considered one of Richardson’s greatest buildings and considered by some to be Hartford’s most architecturally significant building. Originally used for retail space on the ground floor, with offices and apartment space above, it later housed Brown Thomson‘s and then G. Fox and Co.‘s Department stores. Today it is known as the Richardson Building and is again used for a mix of office and retail space, including a Residence Inn and the City Steam Brewery Cafe.
Built in 1859 for James Ashmead, on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford, adjacent to the Day-Taylor House and across from Samuel Colt’s Armsmear. Ashmead and his partner, Edmund Hurlbut, were in the business of gold beating. Sam Colt’s nephew, Sam C. Colt, bought the Italianate house in 1865 and it was most likely he who added the Second Empire style tower and porte-cochere. A later owner added the Colonial Revival portico and pilasters on the corners. Today, the house is home to a legal firm.
Built in 1764 on South Main Street in Suffield for Dr. Alexander King, who was a physician, farmer, and deacon of the Congregational church, as well as serving as a selectman, town clerk and State Representative. The house, which features an original porch leading to the doctor’s office, was later bought and restored by Mr. Samuel Reid Spencer, who gave it to the Suffield Historical Society in 1960. It is currently open as a house museum, which includes galleries on local history.
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