Johnson-Stedman House (1913)

Johnson-Stedman House

The mansion at 1335 Asylum Avenue in Hartford was built in 1913. It was designed in the Jacobethan style by architect Ehrick K. Rossiter, famed for his country houses in the town of Washington in western Connecticut. The house is known as the Johnson-Stedman House because it was built for Mabel Johnson, who shared the residence with her sister Eleanor and aunt Elizabeth Stedman. Mabel Johnson later moved to a smaller house and donated her mansion to the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, which used it as its offices from 1951 until it moved to Meriden in 2014. The house was purchased by two brothers who moved in with their families in 2014.

George W. Flint House (1895)

George W. Flint House

I will be giving a talk tonight at the Hartford Club. Check it out if you are a member! Here is a Hartford building for today: Designed by Hapgood & Hapgood, the house at 310 Collins Street in Hartford is transitional between the Queen Anne and Tudor Revival styles. Built in 1895, it was the home of George W. Flint, a furniture dealer who partnered with John M. Bruce to form the Flint-Bruce Company on Asylum Street in Hartford. The company later had a building on Trumbull Street. (more…)

Gallaher Mansion (1931)

Gallaher Mansion

The Gallaher Mansion in Norwalk was built in 1929-1931 for the inventor and industrialist Edward Beach Gallaher (1873-1953). A graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., Gallaher became a pioneer in early automobile design. In 1910 he settled in Norwalk and established the Clover Manufacturing Company, a producer of industrial abrasives. In 1917 he purchased land for an estate from Dr. Edwin Everett Smith. The site where the mansion would eventually be built, in the Cranbury section of Norwalk, had been the location, from c. 1886 to 1912, of Dr. Smith’s Kensett Sanitarium, which served people suffering from mental disorders and addictions. After a fire destroyed the sanitarium and Dr. Smith’s private cottage in 1912, the institution was moved to 65 East Avenue, on the Norwalk Green, where it operated until Smith’s retirement in 1914. The fieldstone Gallaher Mansion was designed by Percy L. Fowler in the Tudor Revival style. After Gallaher’s death, his wife Inez followed his wishes in bequeathing the mansion to the Stevens Institute. The Institute’s plans to house research projects in buildings to be erected on the estate’s grounds did not materialize. After Inez Gallaher died in 1965, the City of Norwalk acquired the 227-acre property from the Stevens Institute for use as a public park called Cranbury Park. Recent efforts by the city and the Friends of Cranbury Park, a non-profit citizen’s alliance formed in 2006, have restored the mansion and grounds. The mansion can now be rented for weddings and other events.

Rock Ledge (1913)

Rock Ledge

James A. Farell (1863-1941), who was president of U.S. Steel from 1911-1932, built a Tudor Revival mansion in Norwalk in 1911. Designed by Edward Moeller, the original half-timbered building building burned down in 1913 and a new mansion, designed by Tracy Walker and Leroy Ward, was constructed to replace it. A granite structure, the mansion was modeled on Elizabethan country homes, the architects having been sent to England at Farell’s expense to do research for the building. Called Rock Ledge, it was used as a summer home by Farell. The mansion’s later owners included the Sperry Rand Corporation, which developed the UNIVAC business computer on the property, and Hewitt Associates. Located at 40 Highland Avenue in Rowayton, The mansion is now owned by Graham Capital Management LP and is known as the Rock Ledge Financial Center.