Federal Style - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Curtis Wilcox House (1815)

In 1800 [the sign on the house indicates c. 1815], Capt. Curtis Wilcox built a house on the Boston Post Road in Madison and lived there with his wife, Wealthy Hill, the daughter of Reuben Hill and Hannah Scranton. Wilcox became Madison’s first postmaster and his house was the first post office (see pdf file). In 1823, twelve prominent citizens of Madison (then called East Guilford) gathered at the Wilcox House where, under the leadership of Frederick Lee, they started to remedy the community’s lack of its own wharf by pledging a thousand dollars for the construction of West Wharf, completed in 1824. Curtis Wilcox was appointed the first wharfmaster (see pdf file) and many ships were constructed there.

Asa Brainerd House (1790)

The Asa Brainerd House sits on land in Haddam which was owned, from 1788 to 1795, by Leveus Eddy, and was built sometime during that period. It was then purchased by Simon and Asa Brainerd, the latter of whom lived there until his death in 1815. The Brainerd family, who operated nearby granite quarries, sold the house out of the Brainerd family for a time, but later in the nineteenth century, the elegant house, which had fallen into disrepair, was acquired and restored by Asa Brainerd’s grandson, William E. Brainerd. It has remained in the Brainerd family ever since. The Greek Revival entryway was added in the 1830s.

John Brainerd House (1825)

On Quarry Hill Road in Haddam Neck is the home of John Brainerd, built in 1825. According to The Genealogy of the Brainerd Family in the United States (1857), by David Dudley Field:

John Brainerd married first Eliza Day, daughter of Daniel Day, of Westchester, in Colchester, November 1, 1826, who died January 5, 1844, in her fortieth year; and after her death, Delina Dickinson, daughter of Abner Dickinson, of Eastbury, in Glastenbury (sic), February 14, 1845.

Delina Brainerd lived in the house until her death in 1900.

The Brainerd Store/Russell Inn (1813)

On the east bank of the Connecticut River at Haddam Neck is an impressive building built in 1813 by Dudley Brainerd as a house and store. It was a good location: facing Haddam Neck’s main dock at Rock Landing and with a shipyard to the south, sailing vessels would often stop. According to the chapter on Haddam Neck by Henry M. Selden, in the 1884 History of Middlesex County,

The pioneer merchant was Robert Clark. The next was Dudley Brainerd, who built the house now occupied by Captain Charles S. Russell, in the basement of which he had his store. This store was next managed by Selden Huntington one year, succeeded by Elias Selden and Colonel Theodore H. Arnold, under the firm name of Selden & Arnold, then by a Mr. L’Hommedieu, and in rotation by Lavater R. Selden, James S. Selden, Lucius E. Goff, Captain Charles S. Russell, Albert S. Russell, George E. Russell & Co, and Joseph Griffin.

Charles S. Russell bought the building in 1846 and by the 1870s he had converted it to become an inn, serving the steamboat passengers traveling between Hartford and New York City. It was at this time the building was updated, with a Second Empire-style mansard roof and an impressive ornamented three-level front porch. A later addition onto the first story has a granite foundation featuring round windows resembling portholes.

The Capt. Elias Selden House (1800)

This week we’ll be looking at buildings in the Haddam Neck section of Haddam. Haddam Neck is on the east side of the Connecticut River, separated from the rest of the town on the west side without a direct bridge connecting them. A prominent Federal-style house, noticeable when entering Haddam Neck from East Hampton, was built by Capt. Elias Selden around 1800. Selden was a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War and became a captain of militia in 1802. He first built a smaller earlier home across the street from his later house. When he built the current structure, he included part of his late father’s house as a rear ell. Henry M. Selden lived in the house in the later nineteenth century and became postmaster in 1860, running the post office in the building. Selden also wrote a history of Haddam Neck for The History of Middlesex County (1884). The house served as a post office until 1908.

Horace Hayden House (1818)

Near Goodspeed Landing in East Haddam is the house built by Horace Hayden in 1818. Hayden, born in Essex in 1786, was a shipbuilder. According to Paine Family Records, Vol. I (1880), edited by H.D. Paine:

When a young man he was captain of a vessel. In the year 1812, during the war, was wounded by a shot from the enemy, and his vessel burned to the water’s edge, thereby losing all his personal property. He first married Nancy Green, by whom he had three children, Nancy, Nehemiah and Horace. In 1840 he completed a brick store, filled it with goods and placed it in charge of his sons. He was a man beloved by all. The poor always received aid from him, none ever being sent away empty from his door. His funeral was the largest that had ever been attended in East Haddam at that time. He was a member of the Episcopal Church.

The house is now a Bed and Breakfast known as Bishopsgate Inn.

Abigail Whelpley House (1826)

James Abraham Hillhouse, who did so much to develop New Haven’s Hillhouse Avenue in the early nineteenth century, planned a house on the avenue in 1826-1827 for his widowed relative, Mrs. Abigail Whelpley, and her sons. The main Federal-style building may have been moved from elsewhere (dating perhaps to as early as 1800) and Hillhouse also approached architect Ithiel Town to create a new facade for the house, which may or may not have been used. The house was occupied by Noah Porter from 1848 until his death in 1892. Porter was a Yale professor and served as the University’s president from 1871 to 1886. From 1866 to 1870, Porter‘s house was remodeled, by architect Henry Austin, in the fashionable Second Empire style, with a mansard roof and two side porches. Porter‘s daughters inherited the house, which was bequeathed to Yale University in the early twentieth century. At that time, the house was returned to a more Federal appearance and the porches were removed. The building is now home to Yale’s Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics and the Center for International Security Studies.