Greek Revival

Aaron Skinner House (1832)

As with some other homes built on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven the 1830s, the Aaron Skinner House was designed by Alexander J. Davis, with significant involvement by James A. Hillhouse. Skinner, who briefly operated a boy’s school in his home, was persuaded to go along with Davis and Hillhouse’s expensive Greek Revival design. In the 1850s, Henry Austin altered the house by filling in the second story, which originally did not extend so far, to match the first story. This crated a more cube-like appearance. The house was later owned by the Trowbridge family and was bequeathed to Yale by Rachel Trowbridge. It now serves as Yale’s International Center for Finance.

The Mary Pritchard House (1836)

James Abraham Hillhouse (1789-1841), a poet and friend of the important architects, Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, was instrumental as a wealthy patron in the development of the area around New Haven’s Hillhouse Avenue. The street had been originally laid out during the Federal-era town planning undertaken by James Abraham’s father, James Hillhouse. By the 1830s, the area had become a prestigious neighborhood, with numerous Greek Revival mansions being built under the direction of the younger Hillhouse. Among these was one for the wealthy widow Mary Pritchard, constructed using plans drawn up by Davis. Ira Atwater and Nelson Hotchkiss were contracted to build the Greek Revival home with tall Corinthian columns, which was completed in 1836. Like most of the other buildings around it, the house is now owned by Yale.

First Congregational Church of South Windsor (1846)

In 1691, the settlement of East Windsor petitioned the Connecticut General Court for the privilege of having its own church and minister, seperate from Windsor. In 1694, the first meeting house was constructed (to be replaced in 1714). The first minister, ordained in 1698, was Timothy Edwards, father of the renowned preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards, who was born in the East Windsor Hill neighborhood. East Windsor became incorporated as a seperate town in 1768 and in 1845, South Windsor separated from East Windsor. The area where the Edwards had lived was part of the new town. The current Timothy Edwards Church (First Congregational Church of South Windsor) is on Main Street and was built in 1846.

First Church in Windsor (1794)

The history of Windsor’s Congregational Church goes back to 1630, when its founding members arrived in Massachusetts with John Winthrop‘s fleet. In 1635, they left Dorchester, Mass and settled in Windsor. The town and congregation soon grew under the leadership of their minister, John Warham, and their teacher of church doctrine, Ephraim Huit. The church’s first building was located in the center of Palisado Green. The current First Church in Windsor, on Palisado Avenue, was built in 1794, but was significantly altered in 1844 with the replacement of the original steeple and the addition of a columned portico, both in the Greek Revival style.

The Joseph Rainey House (1830)

The date the Joseph Rainey House, on Palisado Avenue in Windsor, was built is unknown, but the Greek Revival style was popular in the 1820s and 1830s. It is also possible that the Greek Revival section was added to an earlier building owned by Jonathan Ellsworth. Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing South Carolina from 1870 to 1879. He bought the house as a summer home in 1874. The house is on the Connecticut Freedom trail.

J.C. Brown House (1833)

The J.C. Brown House was originally built, on Maple Street in Bristol, for the clockmaker Lawson Ives in 1833. Lawson and his uncle Chauncey Ives began the clock-making firm of C. and L.C. Ives in 1830. The company eventually failed in the wake of the 1837 Panic and ensuing depression. The house was sold in 1844 to J.C. Brown, another clockmaker, who often had the image of his house painted tablet of his ogee shelf clocks. After his bankruptcy in 1856, Brown’s clock company was bought by the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Company (later to become the Sessions Clock Company). The Greek Revival style Brown House has two entrances with columned porticos: the one facing Maple Street (west elevation) has Ionic columns and the one facing Woodland Street (south elevation) has Doric columns. The house has been converted for use as offices.

The Henry Mygatt House (1833)

Built between 1833 and 1849 on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, the Greek Revival-style home of Henry Mygatt and his wife, Sarah Woodruff was later owned (from 1936 to 1954) by James Thrall Soby, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who commissioned the architect Henry-Russell Hitchcock to design a new rear wing to the house to serve as an art gallery. An owner in the late 1970s was Alexander Haig, Jr., when he was Director of United Technologies.