Queen Anne

The Wilton Little House, at 122 Windham Street in Willimantic, was built around 1896 [edit (7/28/2014: 1888 according to the Willimantic Victorian Neighborhood Association] and is a fine example of the Queen Anne style. Addendum (7/28/2014): Little was an employee of of Hillhouse & Taylor. In 1896, Little sold the house to George P. Phenix, the second Principal of the Willimantic State Normal School (serving 1893 to 1904), which is now Eastern Connecticut State University. The property was next sold in 1904 to Henry T. Burr, who served as the school’s third Principal, from 1904 to 1918. Burr Hall at eastern was named in his honor.

Eugene Boss rose from being a bookkeeper for the Willimantic Linen Company (later the American Thread Company) to becoming the mill’s agent (or manager), a position he held from 1879 to 1916. He was, literally, boss at the mill. The company had a private rail network between its buildings and the train was pulled by an engine, the Helen B, named after Boss’ daughter. Boss’ house in Willimantic, on Windham Street, from which he could look down on the company’s mills, was built in the 1880s.

The Amos Morris Hathaway House, at 191 Prospect Street in Willimantic, is a Queen Anne house built in 1889. Hathaway was an executive with the Willimantic Linen Company, which later became American Thread Company. In 1957, Hathaway’s surviving daughters, Kate and Marion, deeded the house to the city to become a children’s library: the Taylor-Hathaway Memorial Library. It was named in honor of Dr. Daniel Taylor, Kate’s late husband, and her brother Edgar, who had been an office manager at American Thread. Dr. Taylor was a dentist and expert on telescopes who practiced in New York City and Willimantic and who also owned a home in Noank. The house served as a library for ten years, when the children’s collection was moved to the new library on Main Street.

Located on the steepest part of Chestnut Street in Willimantic, the John A. Conant House has a basement at street level. John Ashbel Conant, who had the house built in 1894, was superintendent of the Holland Silk Company. The Holland brothers had built a steam powered mill on Valley Street in 1865 and Conant became their overseer the following year. Holland Silk Co. became a leading manufacturer of dress silk thread and, by the time Conant built his house, he had become the company’s managing director, a position he held until he retired in 1906. Conant was also involved in the temperance movement and at the American Prohibition National Convention of 1884 in Chicago, he was nominated as the Prohibitionists candidate for vice-president.

The rate of development for residential use on Willimantic’s Prospect Hill was increasing in the 1890s and many fine Victorian homes were being constructed by town’s prosperous upper middle class. In 1899, the industrialist William J. Asher, originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, began the construction of his home at 321 Prospect Street, on land he had purchased from the Windham Manufacturing Company. His Queen Anne house, located across the street from the recently built high school, was completed in 1900. Asher, who owned the Maverick Steam Laundry and also manufactured washing machines, was a prominent member of Willimantic’s early Jewish community. The apex of his home’s front gable contains inlaid scallop shells, a symbol of good fortune. The stone used to construct the front porch came from a textile mill which had been destroyed in a fire in the 1890s. At the rear of the house, Asher had a custom-built garage for his new automobile with an underground fuel tank. Asher left Willimantic in 1914 and sold the house to Archibald W. Turner, a diamond and jeweler dealer, who also acquired Willimantic’s leading livery stable.