George Gilbert Deming, a brick mason in Riverton in Barkhamsted, built his own brick Federal-style house at 2 Robertsville Road in 1824. Deming married Belinda Moore in 1825 and lived not far from the house of his father-in-law, Apollos Moore, and just a few doors down from another brick house he built for his brother-in-law, Charles Moore.
One of the houses that will be featured in tomorrow’s Mark Twain House & Museum Holiday House Tour is located at 164 Oxford Street in Hartford. It was built for an Allen of Sage Allen Department Stores in 1915. Augusta R. Roemer, a resident of the house, was a department president in the Woman’s Relief Corps in 1940-1941. Its present owners are known for their elaborate Christmas decorations, including over 60 themed Christmas trees.
This coming Sunday, December 4, will be the 31st Annual Mark Twain House & Museum Holiday House Tour, presented by the Friends of the Mark Twain House & Museum. One of the houses that will be featured on the tour is a brick Georgian Colonial at 191 Terry Road in Hartford. Built in 1923, it was designed by William T. Marchant, who was also the architect of many other Colonial Revival buildings in the area, including the Alfred C. Fuller and Wallace Stevens Houses in Hartford, the Wood Memorial Library in South Windsor and the old Hall High School, now the Town Hall, in West Hartford.
At 76 Prospect Street in Rockville (Vernon) is the 1893 mansion built for George Sykes. It was the first in a series of Queen Anne-style homes built for the owners of Rockville‘s textile mills. George Sykes came to America from Britain as a boy and from early on worked his way up in the textile industry. In 1866, at the age of 26, he came to Rockville to manage Hockanum Company mill, of which he was later president.
John Allen (1763-1812), originally from Great Barrington, Mass., attended the Litchfield Law School from 1784 to 1786. He set up practice in Litchfield and became active in politics, serving as in the Connecticut House of Representatives (1793-1796) and the U.S. House (1797-1799). He was later a member of the State council and of the Supreme Court of Errors from 1800 to 1806. The John Allen House, at 91 North Street in Litchfield, was built around 1799. The Federal-style house was expanded and altered in the Italianate style around 1865.
The house at 127 Oxford Street in Hartford was built in 1894 for James B. Cone, a Director of the Hartford Carpet Comany and of the Aetna National Bank. The house, designed by Frederick Royal Comstock, was featured in an article, titled “A New England Residence,” in the October 1897 issue of Carpentry and Building. According to the article:
The treatment of the exterior is such as to give a rich and harmonious effect to the design, while the rooms are arranged with a view to the convenience and comfort of the occupants. A feature which will strike many as all essential in a building of this character is a broad piazza extending across the front of the house.
Some of the house’s exterior decoration has been altered over the years, while inside some of the rooms have been combined to create larger spaces. The house was also later expanded with an addition to the south with a corresponding extension of the front piazza. The house will be part of this year’s Mark Twain House & Museum Annual Holiday House Tour, on Sunday, December 4th, 2011.
The Thomas Clarkson House, at 212 Huntington Street in Shelton, is a later Greek Revival house, built c. 1830-1850. According to the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for the Huntington Center Historic District, the Clarkson House is essentially a Colonial half-house form with a shallow hipped roof. In addition, the doorway probably once had a traditional Greek Revival-style wide frieze and cornice, but this part of the entablature was later removed.
You must be logged in to post a comment.