The George and Edward Thompson House is an Italianate house, built on Farmington Ave in Unionville in 1884. It features a veranda with Eastlake-influenced columns and balustrades. The property also has an original barn.
As a young sea captain in 1820, while searching for new seal rookeries south of Cape Horn, Nathaniel Brown Palmer became the first American to discover Antarctica. Palmer Land, on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Palmer Archipelago are named in his honor. Later, Palmer helped develop the clipper ship and became a successful ship owner. A biography of “Captain Nat”, titled Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, An Old-Time Sailor of the Sea, by John R. Spears, was published in 1922. An icebreaking research ship, named the Nathaniel B. Palmer, was launched in 1992. Palmer’s 1852 Italian Villa style mansion, located on Palmer Street in Stonington, overlooks the upper section of Stonington Harbor and is one of four stately homes built in the area of Lambert’s Cove in the 1850s. The house was acquired by the Stonington Historical Society in 1994 and is now open to visitors as a house museum.
The Graves-Gilman House, on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, is an Italianate Villa built in 1866. Originally intended for John S. Graves, it was sold before it was completed to Tredwell Ketcham of New York, who gave it to his daughter, Mary Van Winker Ketcham. She was the wife of Daniel Coit Gilman, a Yale professor and librarian, who became the second president of the University of California in 1872 and in 1875 helped establish the Johns Hopkins University as its first president. Gilman also wrote a number of books, including biographies of James Monroe and James Dwight Dana, whose house was also on Hillhouse Avenue. Yale acquired the house in 1921 and it was converted in 1957 to house the Department of Economics.
The Edward S. Coe House, on Main Street in Cromwell, was built in 1876. Coe was the son of the Middletown butcher, Samuel Coe. He married Elizabeth Strickland Savage, a daughter of Ralph Bulkely Savage. By 1869, Edward Coe was treasurer for the J. & E. Stevens Company, founded by his uncles, John and Elisha Stevens. He eventually became president of the company (1898-1907). He was also president of the Cromwell Dime Savings Bank and was Cromwell‘s delegate to Connecticut’s 1902 Constitutional Convention. Coe’s house is in the Italianate style, which was favored by other members of the Stevens Family.
The late Italianate house of Rev. George Park Fisher, on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, was built in 1865. Rev. Fisher was a professor at Yale Divinity School and the author of History of Christian Doctrine (1896), among other books and essays. The house was later rented (1907) and eventually purchased (1910) by Louis H. Bristol. Yale acquired the house in 1935. Since 1977, it has housed Yale’s Economic Growth Center.
The Italianate-style Capron-Philips House, at 1129 Main Street in Coventry, was built sometime in the 1860s. It served for many years as a post office and later as an apothecary shop (or drugstore). The house is on a corner at an important and once quite busy intersection. A large elm stood nearby, in the middle of Mason Street, until 1938. It was known as the Meetinghouse Tree because notices were posted on it.
On the east side of Broad Street Green in Wethersfield are several houses built by members of the Bulkeley family. The earliest is that of Captain Charles Bulkelkey. Another Bulkeley home is the Italiante-style house built around 1850 by Stephen Bulkeley. The Greek Revival home of his father, Frederick Bulkeley, is next door.
