Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Architectural Style

The Perkins-Rockwell House (1818)

The Perkins-Rockwell House, on Rockwell Street in Norwich, is an interesting stone Federal Style house. It was built around 1818 by Joseph Perkins, a merchant and Revolutionary War soldier. The house was inherited by his daughter, Mary Watkinson Perkins, who married John Arnold Rockwell, a lawyer and politician, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The house was inherited, in 1924, by Mary Watkinson Rockwell Cole. Today it is a museum, operated by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Jude Hamilton House (1802)

The Jude Hamilton House was constructed in 1802, on Main Street in Farmington. It is a brick, Federal style house and has a newer west wing added in the 1960s.

Sylvester C. Dunham House (1904)

Check out my YouTube short about this house!

Displaying features of a Craftsman style bungalow on a Colonial Revival structure, the 1904 Sylvester C. Dunham House, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was designed by Edward T. Hapgood, who was the architect of the Shepard House, also located on Prospect. Sylvester Clark Dunham became president of the Travelers Insurance Company in 1901. His son, Donald A. Dunham, a Yale graduate, also resided in the house.

Charles E. Shepard House (1900)

Charles E. Shepard was a general agent for Aetna Life Insurance. The architect Edward T. Hapgood designed Shepard’s 1900 Craftsman style house, located on the West Hartford side of Prospect Avenue. The house also has elements of a Swiss Chalet, most notably in the third-floor balcony. An adjacent carriage house was built in 1914, designed by West Hartford resident Cortlandt F. Luce. The house was acquired by the Oxford School, now the Kingswood-Oxford School, in 1924 and was used for a middle school. Additional facilities were attached to the original house over the years, but these were removed and the house’s exterior was restored when the entire property was converted for use by the town of West Hartford for a new middle School. The house was converted to office, library and classroom space and attached to the new Bristow Middle School building, off Highland Street, which opened in 2005. This example of adaptive reuse and restoration earned the architectural firm of Tai Soo Kim Partners a 2006 Historic Preservation Award from the Town of West Hartford.

George W. Ellis House (1902)

A house in the Tudor Revival style was built on Prospect Street in Hartford in 1902 for George W. Ellis, who worked at Travelers Insurance Company. It has the diamond paned leaded windows and decorative half-timbering typical of the style, with a more unusual double front gable.

Dr. Micheal Gill House (1901)

The Queen Anne-style house of Dr. Michael Gill, who was a prominent Hartford physician, is on the the West Hartford side of Prospect Avenue. It also features aspects of the shingle and Colonial revival styles. The house was the childhood home of the doctor’s son, Brendan Gill, who attended the Kingswood School nearby and became a well-known writer and contributor to New Yorker magazine. He was also a noted preservationist.

Henry R. Hovey House (1901)

The 1901 Henry R. Hovey House, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, is a Colonial Revival structure, featuring Georgian and Federal elements. Hovey was an employee of the Aetna Life Insurance Company.