Federal Style - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Kellogg-Eddy House (1808)

Built in 1808 for General Martin Kellogg on Willard Avenue in Newington, the Kellogg-Eddy House was the home of an affluent farming family. A Colonial Revival wing was added in 1928. Kellogg was a descendant of Captain Martin Kellogg, who was one of the captives taken at Deerfield in 1704. He later taught Indian boys at Isaac Hollis’ School. He died after settling in Newington and a modern Middle School in town is named for him. Today the house is open as a historical museum run by the Newington Historical Society & Trust and can be rented for events.

Edward Shepard House (1807)

Edward Shepard, a cabinet-maker from East Haddam, built his Federal-style house in Wethersfield in 1807-8. It was originally located on Main Street, where a commercial block now stands, across from the Deming-Standish House. The Shepard House was moved around the corner in the twentieth century and now stands on Church Street. It was built just a few years after the 1800 adding of Federal embellishments to the Deming-Standish House and the 1804 building of the Federal-style Hurlbut-Dunham House. The Federal style of architecture had certainly arrived on Main Street in Wethersfield in the first decade of the nineteenth century! Shepard ensured that his house had extensive Federal detailing, including an elaborate composition around his front door, with a quite different treatment of the tripartite windows above the entrance than that of his two Federal-style neighbors on Main Street.

Robert Robbins House (1792)

Built in the 1790s on Broad Street in Wethersfield, the Robert Robbins House is one of a number of brick Federal style homes in the town designed by James Francis.

Amos Bull House (1788)

This house was originally located on Main Street in Hartford. It was built in 1788 for Amos Bull, a dry goods merchant, who had a shop on the first floor and also ran a school in the house. Bull once lived in the Silas Deane House in Wethersfield and one of his five wives was Abigail Webb from the Webb House. He sold the house in 1821 and it has since been moved twice: once in 1940 and a second time in 1971 to its present location on Prospect Street, behind the Butler-McCook House. The Amos Bull House is a Federal style brick half house, a type of townhouse more commonly found in larger cities than Hartford. In recent years, the building housed the Historic Preservation and Museum Division of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Update: A major restoration of the house was completed in 2014 by Connecticut Landmarks. It is now that organization’s archival repository and offices.

Avon Congregational Church (1819)

Built in 1819 on West Main Street (Route 44), the Avon Congregational Church was designed by the Waterbury-born builder and architect David Hoadley. It is very similar to Hoadley’s 1813 Congregational Church in Norfolk, CT. His masterpiece is New Haven’s United Church on the Green, but the churches in Avon, Norfolk and several other towns, all located west of the Connecticut River and either designed by Hoadley or under his influence, represent simpler versions, suited for smaller communities. Originally part of Farmington, the Avon congregation was recognized as a separate parish, called Northington, in 1751. A split in the Northington church occurred in 1817, when a majority chose to build a new meetinghouse in the west of town, the West Avon Congregational Church–those in the minority went on to build the Avon Congregational Church. Northington became the town of Avon in 1830.

Epaphras Bissell House (1816)

Built for Epaphras Bissell on Old Main Street in South Windsor, this was the third brick Federal style house to be constructed in the East Windsor Hill neighborhood for a member of the Bissell family. It was modeled on the two earlier homes built by Epaphras’ brother, Aaron Bissell, and by Aaron’s son-in-law, Eli Haskell. The house was later owned by Elihu Wolcott, a book merchant who added the piazza on the south elevation, and by Erastus Ellsworth, a nephew of Oliver Ellsworth and brother-in-law of Epaphras Bissell and Elihu Wolcott. Ellsworth was the main patron of the Theological Institute in East Windsor hill, which later moved to Hartford. His son, Erastus Wolcott Ellsworth, was a poet who wrote such works as “What Is the Use” and “The Mayflower.”

Today is Connecticut Open House Day!

Phelps-Hatheway House (1761)

The earliest part of the house was the main block with center-chimney, built around 1761-1767 for merchant Shem Burbank. In 1788, the house was purchased by the merchant, and extensive land owner, Oliver Phelps, who altered the roof to a gambrel style and added other features of the fashionable Georgian style. In 1794, he further altered the house by adding a new wing in the Federal style. The main architect of the addition was Thomas Hayden of Windsor. A young Asher Benjamin, later to become one of the most important architects of the Federal period, was one of the workers on the new wing and carved the Ionic capitals of the wing’s entryway. The interior of the Federal wing is notable for its surviving original French-made wallpaper. When Phelps died, the house was owned by the Hatheway family for a century and is currently open as a house museum, the Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden, administered by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society.