The 1895 William Grant House, at the intersection of Prospect and High Streets in Willimantic, was built in the Queen Anne style, featuring elements of the stick style. It is one of the many Victorian houses for which the city of Willimantic (a “census-designated place” in the town of Windham) is known. The house is currently owned by Eastern Connecticut State University and is used as an alumni house. It will be part of Willimantic’s 2008 Home Tour in June.
Miles Lewis Peck was the president of the Bristol Savings Bank. His 1881 house, on Summer Street in Bristol, was designed by his brother, the Waterbury architect Theodore Peck. The house was built in the Queen Anne style, with decorated barge boards in the Gothic Revival mode.
Elbridge S. Wightman of Bristol owned a distillery and built a Queen Anne-style house on Summer Street around 1890. The Hall House, next door, is also a Queen Anne built around the same time, but is less ornate in its ornamentation than the Wightman House.
Clifford S. Brown was the first owner of an 1876 Queen Anne-style house on Summer Street in Bristol, which was designed by Joel T. Case. Case’s houses are known for having unusual features, with this example having a square corner tower, uncommon for the Queen Anne style. The house was later sold to the inventor Alfred F. Rockwell, who lived there with his wife Nettie. He would later build a large mansion in Bristol, called Brightwood, which has since been destroyed.
Born in Woodhull, New York, Albert Fenimore Rockwell worked at various trades in different places, including several years in Florida in the fruit and hardware businesses. Leaving Florida because of yellow fever, he came to Bristol in 1888 and, in the next year, founded the New Departure Manufacturing Company with his brother Edward. Originally set up to produce a new doorbell based on clockworks, Rockwell’s company would become very successful making bicycle lamps and coaster brakes, which Rockwell patented with Harry P. Townsend. Later, New Departure became the world’s largest producer of ball bearings. Rockwell also produced various automobiles between 1908 and 1911, including the Rockwell taxicab and various Houpt-Rockwell models. In 1913, he was ousted from New Departure, which later became part of General Motors, but went on to purchase the Marlin Firearms Company, manufacturing Marlin-Rockwell machine guns and automatic rifles during the First World War. Before his death in 1925, he donated land for the city to build what is now called the Memorial Boulevard Middle School, on the road called Memorial Boulevard. He also donated the land for Rockwell Park.
Built around 1875, the George A. Bolles House is located on Asylum Avenue in Hartford and is an excellent example of the elaborate and creative homes built in the Asylum Hill neighborhood in the nineteenth century. The house originally had a different front porch, as well as a side porch, which has since been removed.
After completing her home on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford in 1893, Mary Borden Munsill had one built next door for her son, Gail Borden Munsill. The home, completed in 1895, is constructed using yellow brick, which gives it a distinctive appearance. The son’s house, unlike the mother’s, is less ornate and, with its greater smoothness and symmetricality, looks ahead to the Colonial Revival style.
Built in 1893, on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford for Mary Borden Munsill, the daughter of Gail Borden, who had invented condensed milk and founded Borden Milk Products. The house has an irregular Queen Anne design, with many elaborate features. The stone arches also reflect the influence of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.
