Ensworth Carriage House (1888)

Lester L. Ensworth owned a business that produced iron and steel hardware and carriage parts. He was a partner with George H. Clark in Clark and Company, located at the corner of Front and Ferry Streets in Hartford. Ensworth became sole owner in 1892 and the company was renamed L. L. Ensworth & Son in 1901. In 1888, Ensworth moved his family into a large house on the corner of Farmington and Girard Avenues, in Hartford’s West End. The house is no longer standing, but the carriage house survives. Built in grand Queen Anne style to match the no longer extant house, the Ensworth Carriage House has a variety of Victorian features, unified by its exterior covering of shingle siding. Today, the building is home to a ballet company.

Charles Bell House (1883)

Charles H. Bell was a merchant in Portland who continued the business started by his father, Edwin Bell. In 1867, the elder Bell had purchased Samuel Hall’s store on Main Street and Charles Bell would vastly enlarge the building, adding a third floor to the original two-stories. The style of the new third floor resembled the Queen Anne with stick elements of Bell’s own house, built on Main Street in 1883, which perhaps utilized the same materials. Bell’s store sold groceries, flour, hay, grain, seeds and light agricultural implements. Bell also partnered with John Anderson in a firm to manufacture a new kind of lead pipe coupling, patented by Anderson in 1895. (see Portland in 1896 pdf file, p.6)

The Lines-Curtin House (1900)

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On the corner of West Main and Cedar Streets in New Britain is a large Shingle style house, built around 1900 by Charles W. Lines, who ran a grist mill. Lines later moved to Newington and the house was purchased by John M. Curtin, partner in a furniture dealer and undertakers company. The house was the Curtin Funeral Home until the late 1960s and today is used as office space.

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An advertisement in the Official Souvenir and Program of the Dedication of the Soldiers’ monument, New Britain, Conn., September 19, 1900.

Enos S. Kimberly House (1884)

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The Enos S. Kimberly House is a very solid and imposing Queen Anne house, built in 1884 on Orange Street in New Haven. Enos Kimberly was, according to an 1886 bill, a dealer in wholesale and retail coal and wood. His wife, Sarah Chatfield Kimberly, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The architect of the home was Rufus G. Russell, a former assistant of Henry Austin.

Hicks-Stearns Family Museum (1788)

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This Thanksgiving we focus on a house that is now a family museum. The Hicks-Stearns Family Museum, established in 1980, is a Victorian era home, located on Tolland Green. The earliest parts of the house date to the eighteenth century, sometime before 1788, when then owner Benoni Shepard established a tavern in the home known as Shepard’s Tavern at the Sign of the Yellow Ball. Shepard was also a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as postmaster, with a post office in his home, from 1795 to 1807. The house was occupied by the Hicks family from 1845 into the the 1970s. The family enlarged and embellished the house with many Victorian-era architectural features in the 1870s and 1880s. Charles R. Hicks was a leading merchant in Providence and New York, who retired to Tolland. He married Maria Amelia Stearns Their son, Ratcliffe Hicks, was president of the Canfield Rubber Works of Bridgeport and a member of the state legislature. The Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture at UCONN is also named for him.

Ingham Octagon House (1890)

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Located on Main Street in Old Saybrook is an octagon-shaped house known as the Ingham House. It was a prefab building, said to have been purchased from the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue around 1890. The attribution to Sears and Roebuck is open to question, because a number of online sources indicate that the company only began offering kit houses in 1908, and apparently such homes were only available in the United States starting around 1906. So the origins of the house must be considered as still undetermined. The building, which is not a completely symmetrical octagon, has been extensively remodeled to become a dentist’s office.

Addendum: The house was constructed by Horace Archer and was the residence of Robert Burns for many years. Robert Burns was a partner in the nearby Burns and Young store on Main Street. His daughter, Mary Burns, lived in the house and was postmistress for many years.