Adjacent to northeast of the First Congregational Church of Cheshire is a house built around 1835 (1831-1836) for Rev. Joseph Whiting, who served as the first minister in that church building, from 1827 to 1836. The house was owned by a number of ministers over the years. Arthur Sherriff, headmaster of Cheshire Academy from 1923 to 1966, was a later resident of the house, which was sold to the Congregational Church in 1969. The Greek Revival-style house has a later Colonial Revival porch.
The Coopers were early settlers in Hamden. James Cooper built the house at 2052 Whitney Avenue around 1810 (or perhaps as early as 1780). The widow of Cooper’s grandson William married Thomas Hartley in the 1870s and the house remained in the Hartley family for over a half-century.
Dr. Ernest A. Markham acquired a lot on Main Street in Durham in 1881 and by around 1885 his Victorian-style home was completed. Dr. Markham practiced medicince in an office in his home until his death in 1927. The house was owned by the Markham family until 1975.
Built by David Williams, a ship builder, in 1766-1767 (and later expanded), the house at 27 West Avenue in Essex was acquired by Abel Pratt in 1798. According to the 1884 History of Middlesex County,
The manufacture of combs in this country was first begun by Phineas Pratt and his son Abel, about the close of the last century. They were the first inventors of machinery for cutting the teeth upon combs, by which they could be produced so as to compete with English manufacturers. The shop in which they worked stood a few yards west of the site of Pratt’s blacksmith shop, and the first machinery was driven by wind power. Abel Pratt carried on the business during the first years of this century [the nineteenth].
In the later nineteenth century, it was owned by members of the Pratt family connected to the nearby Pratt Smithy, established in 1678 and handed down through ten generations.
When architect Philip Johnson designed his famous Glass House, he simultaneously planned an adjacent structure, known as the Brick House. Completed in 1949, a few months before its counterpart, the Brick House served as a guest house, as well as containing the support systems for both buildings. The Brick House was intended to contrast with its glass neighbor, being enclosed by solid walls, although skylights and porthole windows provide much natural light within. Johnson remodeled the interior with a narrow sky-lit corridor in 1953. The Glass House property has been open for tours since 2007, but recently visitors have not been able to enter the Brick House, which requires $3 million in repairs. (more…)
A particularly well-known and well-respected Connecticut modern house is the Philip Johnson Glass House. Designed by the architect Johnson and built on his 47-acre estate in New Canaan, the Glass House is considered a masterpiece in its use of floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass, set between black steel piers. The minimalist structure was planned in 1945 and finished in 1949. Johnson was inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe‘s 1945 design for the Farnsworth House, located in Plano, Illinois, the construction of which was not completed until 1951. While the wealthy Johnson retained a residence in New York City, he would often retreat to his New Canaan estate, where the Glass House was only the first of several structures he would build on the property. After 1960, Johnson lived in company with his longtime companion, David Whitney, an art critic and curator, who helped with landscaping the grounds and collecting art for the estate. In 1986, Johnson had donated the Glass House to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, retaining a life estate lease. Johnson and Whitney died in 2005 and in 2007, the Glass House was opened to the public for tours. While there is an endowment for the property, maintenance and restoration costs for the various buildings remains high. (more…)
Happy New Year!!! Our first building of 2011 is the birthplace of a hero of the American Revolution. Ethan Allen led the Green Mountain Boys in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and then served in the American military expedition against Canada in 1775. Although famous as a champion of statehood for Vermont, with a Homestead that can be visited in Burlington VT, Allen was born on January 21, 1738 in Litchfield CT. In 1740, his parents Joseph and Mary Allen, moved the family from the Litchfield house, built in 1736, to a new farm in Cornwall. Ethan took over the farm after his father’s death in 1755 and later struck out on his own, establishing a charcoal blast furnace in Salisbury in 1761. He eventually settled in Vermont, having purchased land in the area then known as the New Hampshire Grants. Ethan Allen also wrote a book, Reason: the Only Oracle of Man, first published in 1784.
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