Houses

Deshon-Allyn House (1829)

Daniel Deshon was a New London-based whaling captain and merchant who built a house for himself and his wife Fanny on Williams Street in New London in 1829. Mrs. Deshon died in 1833 and the house was put up for sale, being purchased in 1851 by Lyman Allyn, who was also a successful whaler. The house remained in the Allyn family until 1926, when Harriet Upson Allyn, Lyman’s last surviving child, died. Harriet Allyn had provided for the construction of the adjacent Lyman Allyn Art Museum, which was built in 1932. The Deshon-Allyn House was also opened to the public as part of the museum campus. The house was refurbished in 1956, a major restoration was undertaken in 1996, and another renovation in 2008.

The Nelson Hotchkiss House (1850)

Nelson Hotchkiss was a New Haven builder and manufacturer, who also became a real estate developer. He and Henry Austin were involved in the Park Row development in Trenton, New Jersey in the 1840s. Later, Hotchkiss built three Italianate-style houses, most likely designed by Austin, on Chapel Street in New Haven. One was Hotchkiss’s own home, built in 1850. That same year a house was also constructed for his partner, William Lewis. In 1854, Hotchkiss built his second home on Chapel, but only lived there for two years before moving back to his earlier residence.

The Simon Smith House (1745)

The Colonial Cape-style house of Simon Smith was built around 1745, just before his 1746 marriage to Eleanor Parker. His sons later sold the property, on Saybrook Road in Haddam, to Noah Clark, whose father Samuel Clark moved into the house, which remained in the Clark family until 1941. The house was restored after a fire in 1982.

The Kelo House (1890)

The Kelo House, also known as the Little Pink House, was built in 1890 in a residential area of New London by John Bishop, a prominent local carpenter. It had various owners after Carpenter’s death in 1893 and few years later was moved to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London. In the late 1980s, the Little Pink House and the house next to it were restored by the preservationist, Avner Gregory. On the market for many years, the house was not occupied until Susette Kelo moved in in 1997. When the City of New London sought to use the right of eminent domain to acquire the neighborhood for private development (which would bring in more tax money) it started a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2005. Although Kelo lost in Kelo vs. City of New London, the public reaction to the abuse of eminent domain laws led to citizen activism and new reform legislation in favor of property owners. Three years after the decision, in 2008, the house was rededicated on a new site on Franklin Street in New London. The house had been reacquired and moved by Avner Gregory and stands as a monument, with an explanatory plaque out front, to the battle over eminent domain. A new book about the case, Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, by Jeff Benedict, has just been published.

William Coit House (1763)

In the eighteenth century, Coit Street (then Cove Street) in New London followed the shoreline of Bream Cove, an arm of New London Harbor. The Cove later shrank in the nineteenth century from silting and filling in to create additional land. When the William Coit House, on the corner of Washington and Coit Streets, was built around 1763, it was therefore on the water, although this is no longer the case. The Coits were a shipbuilding family and William Coit commanded ships during the Revolutionary War. Coit was also captain of a militia company, composed largely of sailors, that marched to the Siege of Boston in 1775.

Beatrice Fox Auerbach House (1911)

The residence of Beatrice Fox Auerbach, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was built in 1911 and was designed by the firm of LaFarge & Morris. Additions were made to the home in 1923. The Georgian Revival style house also features elements of the Tudor Revival, including the twin gables and a leaded casement bay window. Beatrice Fox Auerbach was the granddaughter of Gerson Fox, who in the 1840s had founded the store in Hartford that would evolve into the G. Fox & Company department store. Beatrice Fox‘s father, Moses Fox, succeeded his father as president of the company and Beatrice married George Auerbach, who eventually became the company’s secretary-treasurer. Her husband died in 1927 and after her father‘s death in 1938, she became the store’s president. Under her leadership, the company grew until it became the largest privately owned store in the country. She remained president until she sold her privately owned stock in 1965. Auerbach, who died in 1968, was also renowned civic leader and philanthropist. A biography by Virginia Hale has recently been published called A Woman in Business: The Life of Beatrice Fox Auerbach. In 1979 the house was given to the University of Hartford.

The Simon Shailer House (1827)

Rev. Simon Shailer became minister of Haddam’s Baptist Church in 1822. In 1827, he built a house on Saybrook Road in Shailerville adjacent to a house he had constructed for his son that same year. The houses are very similar in their Federal style design, although the Simon Shailer House has a Victorian-era balustraded porch with a hipped roof. Another son of Simon Shailer, Nathan Emery Shailer, also became a Baptist minister. After Rev. Simon Shailer died in 1864, his widow and daughter lived there and it is now owned by a descendant.