Built as part of Constitution Plaza in Hartford in 1963, the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company building, designed by Max Abramovitz, is the world’s first two-sided building. Often called the “Boat Building” due to its shape, it is considered a notable example of the International Style of modern architecture. Phoenix was originally founded in 1851 as the American Temperance Life Insurance Company. Its name was changed to Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance in 1861.
Across High Street from the Russell House in Middletown is the brownstone Gothic Revival style Duane Barnes House, which was possibly designed either by Barnes himself or by A.J. Davis. Today, the house is owned by Wesleyan University and serves as the Davidson Health Center.
Built between 1828 and 1830, on High Street in Middletown, the Samuel Russell House is regarded as “one of the premier examples of Greek Revival architecture in the Northeast.” It was constructed for Samuel Wadsworth Russell, who was an important figure in the early nineteenth century China trade. Russell commissioned the well-known architect, Ithiel Town, a proponent of the Greek Revival, to design the house. The construction of the house was supervised by the builder-architect, David Hoadley. With the Russell House, Town created one of the first homes in America to feature a Greek temple design, utilizing correct Greek proportions and six Corinthian columns on the facade. Its design would prove influential in the creation of other Greek Revival houses. It also set a high standard of elegance for Middletown’s High Street, which Charles Dickens is supposed to have called the most beautiful street in America. The house was given to Wesleyan University by Thomas Macdonough Russell, Jr in 1937.
Built in 1854 on High Street in Hartford, the Isham-Terry House is an Italian Villa-style home that was once surrounded by a residential neighborhood, now lost to urban renewal. Many drivers may notice this distinctive house, standing alone in its isolated position, as they go by on I-84. It was built for Ebenezer Roberts, a partner in a wholesale grocery firm with the Keney Brothers. In 1896 it was bought by Dr. Oliver K. Isham, who used it as both a home and doctor’s office. He lived there with his two sisters, Julia and Charlotte. The sisters continued to live there after his death, despite the vast changes to the neighborhood, remaining into the 1970s. In 1980, they willed the house to the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, and today it is a historic house museum.
The house is notable for a variety of features. The tower to the rear was a later addition and has a third-floor window that awkwardly intersects with the main roof of the house. The house also has intricate cast iron work on the exterior balconies, ordered from the Pheonix Iron Works catalog of 1853 (Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney, two young machinists working for this Hartford company, would start their own company in 1860). The doorway features elaborate columns and stained glass. The inside of the house is virtually unchanged, remaining as the sisters left it, and thus represents a unique survival of a Victorian house interior, even including Dr. Isham’s undisturbed office.
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.
Located in Portland, on Route 66, the Gilbert Stancliff House is an octagon house, a style that was briefly popular in the mid-nineteenth century and gets its name for its eight-sided shape. Octagon houses were promoted by Orson Squire Fowler in his book, The Octagon House, A Home for All. Very few octagon houses survive, with perhaps only 15 or so still standing in Connecticut. The Stancliff House stands side-by-side with another octagon, the Joseph Williams House. They are said to have been built for two brothers. The Stancliff House currently houses doctors’ offices. The exterior was refurbished in 2004, reproducing the original paint colors.
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.
