The Colonial Revival home of Thomas MacDonough Russell, built in 1901-1902, is located on High Street in Middletown. Russell was a descendant of Samuel Russell, whose famous 1828 Greek Revival House is across the street. The Thomas MacDonough Russell House currently houses Wesleyan University‘s Center for African American Studies.
Hartford’s Fourth Congregational Church, modeled on New Haven’s Center Church on the Green, was built downtown on Main Street in 1850. This original building can be seen in a number of historic photographs. In 1913, the Main Street property was sold for commercial development. William F. Brooks, the architect of Hartford’s Municipal Building and the New Britain Public Library, persuaded the congregation to keep the original church’s steeple and portico and use them on the new church, completed in 1914, at the intersection of Albany Avenue and Vine Street. Thanks to this early work of historic preservation, the later building preserves an important part of a demolished historic structure. The Fourth Congregational Church merged in 1953 with Windsor Avenue Congregational Church to form the Horace Bushnell Congregational Church. The church is now home to Liberty Christian Center International. (more…)
Wallace Stevens was one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, he came to Hartford in 1916 , where he worked at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, eventually rising to become a vice-president. In 1932, Stevens purchased a 1926 Colonial Revival style house (designed by William T. Marchant) at 118 Westerly Terrace in Hartford. As he did not drive, Stevens would regularly walk the two miles from his home to his office, often walking through nearby Elizabeth Park as well. He would compose poems in his head during these walks. A non-profit group called the Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens seeks to increase awareness in the Hartford area of Stevens, who died in 1955, and his work. The house is now owned by Christ Church Cathedral.
Hartford’s Memorial Baptist Church was organized in 1884, with its original building on the corner of Washington and Jefferson Streets. A new church, built in the Colonial Revival style, was begun in 1931, but was not completed until 1949, due to the impact of the Great Depression. The church, on Fairfield Avenue, features semi-circular windows, slender columns and other influences of the refined Federal style.
A 1717 farmhouse, on Main Street in Farmington, was purchased in 1798 and enlarged by Dr. Eli Todd. He had been educated at Yale and settled in Farmington to practice medicine, setting up a hospital for patients with smallpox. Later moving to Hartford, he became a pioneer in the field of psychiatry. He was the principal founder of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, now known as the Institute of Living, and became its first superintendent, serving until his death in 1833. His house in Farmington would have other owners, including Alfred Pope, who bought the house in 1899 and lived here while his new home, Hill-Stead, was being constructed nearby. Pope made additional alterations to the house in the Colonial-Revival style.
Hartford’s Georgian Revival style West Middle Middle School of 1930 replaced the school’s earlier building, a Victorian Gothic structure designed by Richard M. Upjohn and erected in 1873. The school‘s original facade faces Asylum Avenue in the city’s Asylum Hill neighborhood. Its design, like that of a number of other buildings in the city, was based on that of the Old State House. Update (2017): the school recently underwent a major renovation. West Middle Community School now has its main entrance on Niles Street. The Mark Twain branch of the Hartford Public Library has moved to a location inside the school, with its entrance being the school’s former front facade on Asylum Avenue.
A Cardinal House is a bed and breakfast located on Main Street in Glastonbury. Their website describes it as an 1850 house in the Georgian Revival style. That would make it a very early example of this style of building.
Edit (5/27/08): I have more recently learned that this house was extensively remodeled in 1897 and again in 1936, when it was the home of Dr. Lee J. Whittles. He studied Glastonbury’s old houses for decades and was part of the committee responsible for the Welles-Shipman-Ward House from being razed.
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