Craftsman - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Chapel, Avon Old Farms School (1922)

One of the first buildings to be constructed at Avon Old Farms School in Avon was a carpentry shop (other early buildings were the Water Tower and Forge). The carpentry shop was later turned into the school’s Chapel in 1948 and named the Chapel of Jesus the Carpenter. The school buildings were designed by Theodate Pope Riddle, who utilized craftsman from the Cotswolds in England to construct buildings in a traditional English country manner. The carpentry shop is a half-timbered structure of brick nogging resembling similar buildings found in English villages that Theodate Pope Riddle had visited. Originally, students sat in the chapel on seats that faced each other along its length. The Chapel underwent a major renovation in 1999: the roof was restored and a new organ was installed inside. Next to the Chapel is a wooden cross, made in the early 1950s with hand tools using timber grown in the school’s woodland’s. It was placed in its current location when the Chapel was renovated in 2000. A tablet notes that it is dedicated to the memory of Donald W. Pierpont, Provost (Headmaster) from 1947 to 1968.
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Water Tower and Forge, Avon Old Farms School (1922)

Avon Old Farms School, which opened in 1927, is a boarding school for boys founded by Theodate Pope Riddle, Connecticut’s first licensed female architect. She lived at Hill-Stead in Farmington, which she had helped design. Planning for the school’s campus began in 1918 and the land was cleared in 1921. The buildings were modeled after English Cotswold and Tudor styles and utilized traditional English methods. Among the earliest structures to be built were the Water Tower and the Forge, located at the entrance to the campus, whose foundations were laid in 1922. The cylindrical Water Tower is constructed of red sandstone at the base, which melds into similarly-colored brick. Connected to it is the Forge, which has two large chimneys. Constructed of sandstone blocks and brick, it was built as a working forge and provided the metal hardware (hinges, door latches, stair rails, and lanterns) used throughout the campus. The Water Tower contained water until 1976, when cisterns were placed underground. It is now the Ordway Gallery. The Forge was later converted to classroom and meeting space and its exterior has recently been restored.

Francis H. Holmes House (1908)

The Francis H. Holmes House is a residence of eclectic design (primarily Jacobethan, with Craftsman, Shingle and Classical elements) at 349 Rocky Hill Avenue in New Britain. Built in 1906-1908, the house was designed by architect Walter P. Crabtree for Francis H. Holmes, superintendent of the Holmes & Dennis Brick Company. The brick yard, of which Holmes’s father, John W. Holmes was a partner, was located nearby in Berlin, just a few blocks south of the house. The two men were also involved in the creation of the Central Connecticut Brick Company. Fittingly, for the home of a brick manufacturer, the Holmes House features a variety of types of brick. The house once had a porte cochere on the north side. (more…)

Beach Memorial Library (1900)

The Beach Memorial Library, on Main Street in Newtown, was built in 1900. It was the gift of Rebecca D. Beach, a descendant of Rev. John Beach, the first minister of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown. John Francis Beach, another Beach descendant, laid the building‘s cornerstone. It served as a library until 1932, when the Cyrenius H. Booth Library opened. The former library then became a private residence. The house was later home to John Reed, who served as Newtown‘s Superintendent of Schools for twenty years.

Highfield (1914)

In 1911, Theodate Pope Riddle, famous for designing Hill-Stead in Farmington, completed plans for another country estate for her friends, Joseph and and Elizabeth Chamberlain. In 1909, the Chamberlins had acquired land in Middlebury, close to Whittemore estate. Their house, called “Highfield,” was constructed in 1911-1914, on a hill above Lake Quassapaug. Theodate’s design for the house was influenced by her recent trip to England, where she had studied traditional village architecture and the work of English Arts and Crafts architects like Edwin Lutyens. Designed to resemble a rustic English cottage, Highfield has a large interior, with the second story cleverly concealed behind the sloping shingled roof. Next to the house is a sunken garden, where Theodate created a sumer house with removable glass walls. Charles Downing Lay made alterations to the back of the house in 1925 and to the attic in 1929. In 1954, the Stillman family, who had suceeded the Chamberlins as owners of the house, sold the property, which became a nine hole golf course. The house is now the clubhouse.

The Edward Wilson House (1910)

The Arts and Crafts or American Craftsman style of house was popular at the start of the twentieth century. The house at 168 Buckingham Street in Waterbury, built around 1910, displays a number of Arts and Crafts features, including wide bracketed eaves, a low pitched front gable roof, and the use of mixed materials, in this case represented by the different exterior siding seen on each floor. The house may have been built by the Tracy Brothers construction company of Waterbury, because it was built for Edward Ely Wilson, a vice-president at the firm. According to Volume III of History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley (1918), Wilson came to Waterbury in 1888 and “and became foreman of the shop of the Tracy Brothers Company. His ability won him immediate advancement and led to his admission to a partnership. Upon the incorporation of the business he was chosen vice president and so continues. […] He is today an officer in one of the foremost contracting firms of the city with a patronage that makes its business one of large volume and importance.”

The Landers House (1910)

Landers, Frary & Clark, a New Britain company which manufactured cutlery, was founded in the 1850s by George M. Landers. The company (pdf) was known for such products as the Universal Food Chopper/Grinder. George M. Landers‘ son, Charles Smith Landers, married Grace Judd, the daughter of Loren F. Judd, of North & Judd, a company which manufactured saddlery hardware. Their son was also named George M. Landers. Grace Judd Landers later lived in a house which on Lexington Street in New Britain. It was built around 1910 for William H. Hart, president of Stanley Works, and sold to Mrs. Landers upon the death of Hart’s widow in 1929. It is located on the edge of Walnut Hill Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The style of the house combines elements of the Spanish Mission style (the use of stucco and stone and the Spanish style roofing tiles) and the Craftsman style (the gables and overhanging eaves with decorative brackets).

In 1935, Grace Judd Landers bequeathed the house to the the Art Museum of the New Britain Institute, now the New Britain Museum of American Art. The building was remodeled as an art museum based on designs by William F. Brooks, of the firm Davis & Brooks, and opened in 1937. In 2007, a new museum building was opened, connected to the Landers House, which has again been renovated and now houses an art lab, library and art studio.