A good example of a Federal-style house (although the Palladian window may not be original to the house), the Jonathan Mix House, on Elm Street in New Haven, was built in 1799. In 1832, it was purchased by a nephew of Eli Whitney, Eli Whitney Blake, and was owned by members of his family until it was acquired by the Graduate Club in 1901. The next year, a rear addition was made, designed by Richard Clipston Sturgis of Boston.
The Timothy Bishop House is a great surviving example of New Haven’s Federal-style architecture. Located on Elm Street, it was constructed soon after the land was purchased in 1815. The street was lowered and widened in the nineteenth century, resulting in the loss of the home’s front lawn and necessitating the addition of the exposed basement floor. The house is now used as offices.
United Church on the Green, located on New Haven Green just northeast of First Church, was built 1812-1815. The Congregation dates back to the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. In 1796, two congregations united: the White Haven church (formed in 1742) and the Fair Haven church (formed 1769). Their church building, originally known as North Church, was designed by Ebenezer Johnson, a member of the church committee, who made reference to the design of All Saints Church in Southampton, England (designed by C. L. Stieglitz; built 1792-5; destroyed 1940) as featured in a French architectural book. North Church was built by the noted Connecticut architect, David Hoadley. In 1849, the interior was totally remodeled by Sidney Mason Stone. In 1884, North Church joined with Third Church to form United Church. Both congregations had been involved with abolitionism: Third Church’s Simeon Jocelyn was a founding member of the Amistad Committee and North Church’s Roger Sherman Baldwin was a lawyer who defended the Amistad African’s rights.
Now that April Fools Day is over, the rest of April will be New Haven Month at Historic Buildings of CT. First up is New Haven’s First Congregational Church, also called Center Church on-the-Green, due to its central location, between two other churches, on New Haven Green. The city’s congregation goes back to the founding of the New Haven colony in 1838. The new town was carefully planned out by the settlers in what is known as the “Nine Square Plan,” with New Haven Green at the center. Four successive Meeting Houses were constructed on the Green: the first in 1640, the second in 1669 and the third in 1757. The fourth and current church was built, in the Federal style, between 1812-1814. Designed by Asher Benjamin, who sent the plans from Boston, the church was built by the then unknown Ithiel Town, who may have added some of his own elements to the design. The building was one of many in America modeled on St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The interior was remodeled by Henry Austin in 1842. Center Church is also famous for having been partly constructed over the town’s old Colonial burying ground, remains of which can be found in the church’s Crypt.
Eliakim Cook of East Windsor Hill (now in South Windsor) bought a house on Old Main Street in 1738 that had been built by Matthew Grant in 1710. Eliakim died in 1776 and in 1778 the house was rented to Dr. Primus Manumit. Formerly a slave belonging to Dr. Alexander Wolcott of Windsor, Primus was released from bondage and took the Latin word “Manumit” as his surname Having assisted Dr. Wolcott over the years in preparing medicines for the sick, he moved to East Windsor and worked as a doctor until his death in 1787. The old Eliakim Cook house was removed around 1790 when Cook’s grandson, also named Eliakim, built the current house on the lot. Not long after it was built, Eliakim sold it to his brother, Benjamin Cook, Jr. Note: This post was written on 09/02/2011 and backdated so that there would be a regular post for 04/01/2008 as well as an April Fool’s Post.
Completed in 1794, the tavern operated by Abel Lewis and his wife, Ruth, on Maple Street in Bristol, served patrons into the nineteenth century and was the venue for public dances. Abel and Ruth were the parents of Miles Lewis, who lived nearby. In 1890, the property was purchased by the Bristol Builder Joel T. Case, who Victorianized the house, adding a roof dormer, porches and decorative trim and siding.
By about 1780, the wealthy Farmington merchant Zenas Cowles bought a house (built in 1690) on Main Street, at Meadow Lane, that had been lived in by blacksmith Isaac Bidwell (and earlier by the town’s first two ministers). Zenas’s brother, Solomon Cowles, lived in a house just across Meadow Road. Circa 1782, Zenas employed the British architect William Sprats to build a newer and grander house around the older one. Sprats had been a British officer during the Revolutionary War, but was captured and remained in America after the war. He may have employed former Hessian soldiers, who had also been prisoners, as carpenters in the construction of the house. Designed in an elaborately detailed Georgian-style, the house is known as Oldgate because of the property’s front gate, which features a broken scroll pediment and an Asian design signifying “peace and prosperity.” In the nineteenth century, the house was home to Thomas Cowles, a prominent Farmington resident, politician and abolitionist. A later owner of the house was Rear Admiral William Sheffield Cowles, whose wife, Anna Roosevelt Cowles, was the sister of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Farmington in October of 1901.
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