One of the Manchester mansions of the Cheney family of Silk Manufacturers, the Horace B. Cheney House was built in the mid-1890s. It has a Forest Street address and is also adjacent to the “Great Lawn,” where many of the mansion are located. Horace B. Cheney was the son of Frank Woodbridge Cheney and Mary Bushnell Cheney, the daughter of Horace Bushnell. His brothers were Ward, Howell, Austin and Frank D. Cheney.
Julius Deming was a prominent merchant whose house is on North Street in Litchfield. Erected from 1790 to 1793, the Deming house was designed and built by the important builder William Sprats, whose other work includes the house in Farmington called Oldgate, built around the same time as the Deming House. In the later nineteenth century, the house was used by Deming’s daughter Lucretia Deming as a summer home. She planted linden trees in front of the house, which became known as “The Lindens.” The house remained in the Deming family until 1910. There have been many Colonial Revival-style alterations made over the years, including the addition of a mansard roof with flared eaves in 1936. The house is still considered one of Connecticut’s best examples of the Federal style.
Linked to the Cheney family of silk manufacturers in Manchester, the Willard House is considered one of the Cheney Mansions–it was built for John Davenport Cheney. Located on Hartford Road in Manchester, the house was designed by Charles Adams Platt (himself a member of the Cheney family) and was constructed in 1905. It is currently utilized as the Alison Gill Lodge of the Shelter for Women.
The New Haven Free Public Library goes back to its original opening in 1887 in leased space in a building on Chapel Street. Having outgrown this location by the first few years of the twentieth century, a permanent building was constructed at the corner of Elm and Temple Streets. Built between 1908 and 1911, the building was designed by the prominent architect Cass Gilbert of New York, who had won the design competition. He created a Colonial Revival structure, set back from the street, that would harmonize with the early nineteenth century architecture nearby, including that of United Church on the Green.
The Seth Cheney House, on Hartford Road in Manchester, was probably built sometime in the mid-nineteenth century and was remodeled in 1910. Located northeast of the Cheney Homestead, it is one of Manchester’s Cheney Mansions. A later owner (in the 1890s) was Mrs. Emeline Cheney (widow of Arthur Cheney), who had an interest in Spiritualism and was a friend and confidant of Isabella Beecher Hooker. Today, the house is a bed-and-breakfast known as the Mansion Inn.
Donated by William Wood, of South Windsor, in honor of his parents, Dr. William Wood (a distinguished ornithologist) and Mary Ellsworth Wood, the Wood Memorial Library, on Main Street, served as the one of town’s two libraries from its dedication, in 1928, into the 1970s, when a new library building was constructed on Sullivan Avenue. In 1971, the non-profit Friends of Wood Memorial Library was founded to oversee its continued operation, through private funds, as a library, museum and historical archive. The library, built between 1926 and 1928, was designed by the Hartford architect William Marchant in the Colonial Revival style, with features drawn from the Federal period.
The Jonathan Camp House, at 1430 Asylum Avenue in Hartford, may look familiar to those interested in American history. It is a virtual replica of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, in Virginia, but features some grand additions to its model, including a much fancier entry with a semicircular fanlight and side lights, as well as an elaborate balustrade along the roof. Mount Vernon also influenced the design of other Colonial Revival style houses, like the Hill-Stead, but this house, designed by Edward T. Hapgood and built in 1911, follows the first president’s home very closely, with some early twentieth century aggrandizement.