Built around 1875, the Italianate house at 3341-43 Whitney Avenue in Hamden was built for Joseph H.K. Miller. He was employed by the Mount Carmel axle works factory of Frederick Ives, part of the New Haven area’s carriage building industry. By 1880, Joseph’s brother, Willis E. Miller, became a partner in the company, which was thereafter known as Ives and Miller. The factory was in operation until 1907.
Gamaliel King (1795-1875) was a New York City architect who designed four houses in Stonington, by the shores of Lambert’s Cove. The house of James Ingersoll Day was lost due to the Hurricane of 1938, but the other three survive. One is the Nathaniel B. Palmer House of 1852 and another is Cove Lawn, built in 1856 for Captain Theodore Dwight Palmer. The third is Linden Hall, also known as the Stanton House, built in 1857 to 1859 for brothers Joseph Warren Stanton and Charles Thompson Stanton.
Dr. Ernest A. Markham acquired a lot on Main Street in Durham in 1881 and by around 1885 his Victorian-style home was completed. Dr. Markham practiced medicince in an office in his home until his death in 1927. The house was owned by the Markham family until 1975.
The commercial building at 15 Water Street in Mystic was built in 1859 by Isaac Randall and Dwight Ashby, who were both involved in the whaling industry. It has had many owners over the years, housing many different stores and also serving as a boarding house. Since 1965, the building has been known as The Emporium. It has a store on the main floor filled with unique merchandise and an art gallery on the second floor.
At the corner of West River and Maple streets (144 West River St.) in Milford is an Italianate mansion built sometime in the 1850s. It was once the home of Mary Augusta Hepburn Smith (1825-1912), born in New York City, who married Edwin Porter Smith (1813-1890) in 1847. Maintaining her summer home in Milford after her husband’s death, she became, in 1896, a founder and the first Regent of the Freelove Baldwin Stowe Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Mary A. Hepburn Smith made a lasting impact on Milford when she purchased the commercial and industrial properties (mills, factories and low-rent housing affected by an 1899 fire) across from her home along the Wepawaug River (where Duck Ponds and a Kissing Bridge would be created), which she donated to the city as a park. Earlier this year, Mary Hepburn Smith was formally inducted into the Milford Hall of Fame.
Allen G. Brady, who operated a cotton mill in Torrington, served as a major in the Seventeenth Connecticut Regiment in the Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Brady took command of the Regiment after the death of Lt. Col. Douglas Fowler during the fighting at Barlow’s Knoll on July 1, 1863. The following day, Brady was wounded in the shoulder. After the War, Brady had a house built on Prospect Street in Torrington, which was at that time a residential area. He later moved to North Carolina to run a rebuilt cotton mill. The Gleeson Mortuary has used the house since 1927.
Along with the Hotchkiss-Fyler House (1897), another house on the Fyler-Hotchkiss Estate is the Carson House, an Italianate residence. It was built in 1880 for James Carson, treasurer and partner of the Turner and Seymour Manufacturing Company and head of the Torrington Manufacturing Company. It was built on land that Carson had acquired from Orasmus R. Fyler. In 1892, he sold the property back to Fyler. Carson, suffering from Bright’s Disease, had suddenly retired. A few months later, after consulting a doctor in New York, Carson went missing from the train on which he had been returning home to Torrington. After the Fyler’s acquired his house, they rented it out to various tenants. Along with the rest of the estate, the Carson House was bequeathed by Gertrude Fyler Hotchkiss to the Torrington Historical Society. In 1975, the interior of the house was adapted to become museum exhibition space for the Society.
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