Gen. Daniel Baldwin House (1791)

Traditionally called the Gen. Daniel Baldwin House, the house on Main Street at Church Hill Road in Newtown, consists of an earlier section in the rear, dating to 1712 and built by Job Sherman, and the Federal-style front section, built in 1791 by Joseph Nichols. The house was later owned by David Van Buren Baldwin, grandson of Caleb Baldwin, who operated the nearby Baldwin Tavern. It has the most elaborately detailed facade of the eighteenth-century houses in the Newtown Borough Historic District.

Maxwell E. Perkins House (1836)

The Greek Revival-style house at 63 Park Street in New Canaan was constructed by local builder Hiram Crissey in 1836. The most famous resident of the house was Maxwell E. Perkins, the legendary editor of such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins bought the house, which is half a block from New Canaan Metro-North Station, in 1924 and lived there until his death in 1947. His widow Louise lived in the house until her death in 1965: she had fallen asleep smoking in bed and started a fire which gutted part of the building. It was then subdivided into apartments by the Perkins’ daughter. In 1973, the house was acquired by Richard and Sandra Bergmann, who restored it over seven years. Richard Bergmann is an architect whose firm is based in the house.

Nathan Bulkley House (1750)

Like the Justin Hobart House and the Isaac Tucker House, the Nathan Bulkley House, built in 1750, survived the burning of Fairfield by the British in 1779. According to The Old Burying Ground of Fairfield, Conn. (1882), by Kate E. Perry, Nathan Bulkley “was deacon in the Congregational Church; a prominent man in town affairs, and Town Clerk for 82 consecutive years. He married Sarah, daughter of Joseph Perry, I. At the burning of Fairfield Nathan Bulkley owned the ‘Colonial home’ which descending to the second wife of the late Dr. J. T. Denison, is yet standing and In good repair.”

The Fisk Shailer House (1823)

Fisk Shailer built a traditional colonial-type house on Saybrook Road in Haddam at the time of his marriage in 1823. Shailer was killed in 1828 in an explosion at the Shailer & Hall Brownstone Quarry in Portland. In 1855, Shailer’s widow, Hope Ventres Shailer, daughter of John Ventres, Jr., sold the house to Carlos B. Tyler, whose family remained there until 1924. The house’s Colonial Revival front porch was added in the early twentieth century.

The John Ventres, Jr. House (1812)

John Ventres, Jr. House

John Ventres, Jr. built his house in the Shailerville section of Haddam between 1805, when he and his brother Samuel first acquired the land, and 1812, around the time John married his second wife, Anne Shailer. Ventres died in 1884 and his third wife, Mabel, sold the house to John’s son George in 1896. The house remained in the family until 1907. The original large center chimney was at some point replaced by two smaller brick chimneys. (more…)

The Ludlow Bull House (1828)

The house at 114 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1828 by Leonard Goodwin, a trustee of the Litchfield Female Academy. Ludlow Bull purchased the house in 1925 and in 1928 he completely remodeled it as his summer home in the Colonial Revival style. Ludlow Seguine Bull (1886–1954) was an Egyptologist who started Yale’s Egyptology program and was an associate curator of Ancient Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.