Dr. John Slade Ely was professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Yale Medical School from 1897 until his death in 1906 (when a memorial professorship was established in his honor). Dr. Ely lived in a Tudor-style house, designed by S. G. Taylor, on Trumbull Street in New Haven. When his widow, Grace T. Ely, died in 1960, she left the house as a non-profit arts center.
Saint Clements Castle is located along the Connecticut River in Portland. It was built for Howard Taylor, a solicitor, and his wife Gertrude and was designed by New York architect Sidney Algernon Bell. The mansion displays the influence of sixteenth century European castles, while the roofs resemble those found on homes in the Bavarian alps. A Norman inspiration appears in the stone tower, above the French Tudor entrance. The balcony was modeled on the Inn of William the Conqueror at Dives-sur-Mer and the living room is based on the Great Hall of the Chateau of Langeais. Construction was finished on November 23, 1902. Because November 23 was celebrated in England as the Feast of St. Clement, an early pope and Apostolic Father, the name “Saint Clements Castle” was chosen for the house. In 1993, the house’s then owner turned the 82-acre estate over to the nonprofit Saint Clements Foundation, which has restored the home and is dedicated to preserving the historic property. More pictures below… (more…)
Morton Freeman Plant, son of the railroad and steamboat magnate Henry Bradley Plant, was a very wealthy businessman who was also known to live a playboy lifestyle He built the mansion known as Branford House on Avery Point in Groton. Instead of building his expensive summer home in Newport, Plant, who had a great interest in agriculture, chose the less crowded Groton, where there was greater space to build extensive gardens, greenhouses and farms. The 31-room Tudor Revival mansion was built in 1903 and named Branford House, after the town where Plant had been born. It was designed by Plant’s wife, Nellie, with English architect Robert W. Gibson carrying out her plans. The granite used in the construction was quarried from the surrounding grounds. After Plant died in 1918, the estate passed to his son and then his daughter-in-law. The house was eventually sold at auction in 1939 and later became the property of the United States Coast Guard, with the house being used as offices and quarters for the families of the station’s commanding and executive officers. Much of the grounds were bulldozed during this period and the adjacent Avery Point Lighthouse was built in 1942. In the 1960s, the Coast Guard station moved and the land reverted to the State. It was then given to the University of Connecticut and is now UCONN’s Avery Point branch campus. The mansion was refurbished in 2001 and is available for rental.
A house in the Tudor Revival style was built on Prospect Street in Hartford in 1902 for George W. Ellis, who worked at Travelers Insurance Company. It has the diamond paned leaded windows and decorative half-timbering typical of the style, with a more unusual double front gable.
Constructed during New Haven’s apartment house building boom of the 1920s, the Cambridge Arms, on High Street, was designed by Lester Julianelle in the Jacobethan-style, to complement the Gothic architecture of nearby Yale University. Jacobethan was a more elaborate style than the humbler and more rustic Tudorbethan. The apartment building features the Jacobethan’s multifaceted turrets and varied bays, which helped reduce the structure’s massiveness on a residential street.
The John Schwab House, on Prospect Street in New Haven, was designed in the Tudor Revival style by R. Clipson Sturgis. Schwab was a professor of political economy at Yale who later became Librarian of Yale University. He was the author of History of the New York Property Tax (1890) and The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865: A Financial and Industrial History of the South During the Civil War (1901).
The Charles Cheney House is one of the Cheney Mansions in Manchester that was constructed across the Great Lawn from Hartford Road. It is southwest of the adjacent Austin Cheney House. The Charles Cheney House was built in the Tudor style. Tax records indicate it was built in 1851, but may have a later date, when the Tudor Revival style was popular. Charles Cheney was one of the Cheney Brothers of silk manufacturers.
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