Camp-Wilcox House (1874)

Samuel T. Camp, a Middletown Grocer and banker, resided in a house he erected in 1865 at 180 College Street. In 1874, he erected a rental house on the adjacent lot at 11 Pearl Street. Its first tenant, from 1875 to 1890, was Caleb T. Winchester (1847-1920), an 1869 graduate of Wesleyan who became the college’s librarian (1869-1873) and then a professor of English Literature (1873-1920). In 1890 moved into a new house at 284 High Street. In 1906, the house at 11 Pearl Street was acquired by Edgar J. Wilcox and became his residence. Wilcox was president of the Connecticut Business College, which had locations in the Y.M.C.A. building in Middletown and in Hartford. The house remained in his family until 1943. A brick structure, the house is designed in a variety of the Italianate style sometimes referred to as a bracketed cottage. There is a nearly identical house at 154 Church Street that was most likely the work of the same builder.