The Italianate farmhouse at 1002 Middlebury Road in Watertown (pdf) was built in 1841 by James Bishop, on part of the Hamilton Farm, which had been purchased that year by his father, Leverett Bishop. In 1854, the property was sold to the Partree family. In 1903, the house was purchased by Rollin and Howard Cashman, who ran a dairy farm on the property for nearly 40 years. For a time, the house was operated as The Graham House Bed and Breakfast, but it is now again a residence.
The ashlar granite Italianate house at 5 The Green in Watertown was erected in 1851 by Truman A. Warren. He was the son of Alanson Warren, of the manufacturing firm of Warren, Wheeler & Woodruff. Alanson Warren was also the first president of a company that grew out of that firm: Wheeler & Wilson, manufacturers of sewing machines. Truman A. Warren was a Republican politician. The house has been attributed to New Haven architect Henry Austin or it may have been designed by an architect copying Austin’s style of Italianate villa.
Morse Richtmeyer of the Ideal Laundry was the first resident of the house at 38 Spring Street in Bristol. The house was built circa 1886 by the noted Bristol builder Joel T. Case. In later years, the house’s Italianate cupola was removed, but more recently it has been restored.
Based in Plymouth, Shelton & Tuttle Company was a successful manufacturer of buggies and other horse-drawn vehicles in the nineteenth century. The company’s founder, Augustus C. Shelton, built an elaborate Greek Revival house at 663 Main Street circa 1850 (or was the house built earlier, in 1825, and Shelton moved in later?). Shelton had served an apprenticeship as a wheelwright in New Haven before returning to his hometown of Plymouth in 1837. He set up his carriage factory, which was run by his partner, Byron Tuttle, after his death in 1880.
Known as the Blakeslee House, the building at 63 North Street in Plymouth is a colonial Cape-type house, built in 1780.
The Colonial Revival house at 734 Clinton Avenue in Bridgeport was built in 1916 for Lacey R. Blackman, a real estate and insurance agent. The house is now used for offices.
The borough of Thompsonville in Enfield grew up around the carpet mill established by Orrin Thompson in 1829. His son Henry Graham Thompson later opened a stockingnet factory and lived in a Greek Revival house (now much altered) at 22 Prospect Street in Thompsonville. Around 1850, he built a new house at 34 Prospect Street. A Gothic cottage, it was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis in 1848. In 2002, residents responded to alterations that removed the house’s decorative features and installed vinyl siding. The siding was soon removed and the building restored with its “gingerbread trim” intact. Henry G. Thompson later built a large estate off Long Island Sound in Milford that he called Morningside.
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