Christopher Leffingwell House (1675)

leffingwell.jpg

The oldest section of the Leffingwell House, on Washington Street in Norwich, dates to 1675 and was built by Steven Backus. Sometime later, the house was sold by Backus to Ensign Thomas Leffingwell, son of Lt. Thomas Leffingwell, who had given assistance to the Mohegan Chief Uncas in 1645, when he brought supplies at time when Uncas was under siege by the Narragansett. Leffingwell converted the building for use as a tavern in 1701, adding more rooms. The house is now named for his descendant, Christopher Leffingwell, who later inherited the tavern. He was a merchant and entrepreneur, who eventually built several mills. During the Revolutionary War, Leffingwell was a deputy commissary to the Continental Army and George Washington occasionally stayed at the Leffingwell Inn. In 1957, the house was moved to its present location when a connector was built linking Washington and Town Streets. Today, the Leffingwell House Museum is open to the public and operated by the Society of the Founders of Norwich.

The Henry Bill House (1856)

bill-house.jpg

The Italianate house of Henry Bill (1824-1891) was built in 1856 on Broadway in Norwich. Bill, a book publisher who sold many illustrated bibles, supported the education of former slaves after the Civil War. The house was acquired by the Norwich Free Academy in 1930, but is today a private home which has been restored by the current owners.

Hello to Melissa and Brett, who accompanied me on my most recent picture-taking trip in Norwich.

The Perkins-Rockwell House (1818)

perkins-rockwell.jpg

The Perkins-Rockwell House, on Rockwell Street in Norwich, is an interesting stone Federal Style house. It was built around 1818 by Joseph Perkins, a merchant and Revolutionary War soldier. The house was inherited by his daughter, Mary Watkinson Perkins, who married John Arnold Rockwell, a lawyer and politician, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The house was inherited, in 1924, by Mary Watkinson Rockwell Cole. Today it is a museum, operated by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Sylvester C. Dunham House (1904)

830-prospect.jpg
Check out my YouTube short about this house!

Displaying features of a Craftsman style bungalow on a Colonial Revival structure, the 1904 Sylvester C. Dunham House, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was designed by Edward T. Hapgood, who was the architect of the Shepard House, also located on Prospect. Sylvester Clark Dunham became president of the Travelers Insurance Company in 1901. His son, Donald A. Dunham, a Yale graduate, also resided in the house.

Charles E. Shepard House (1900)

shepard-house.jpg

Charles E. Shepard was a general agent for Aetna Life Insurance. The architect Edward T. Hapgood designed Shepard’s 1900 Craftsman style house, located on the West Hartford side of Prospect Avenue. The house also has elements of a Swiss Chalet, most notably in the third-floor balcony. An adjacent carriage house was built in 1914, designed by West Hartford resident Cortlandt F. Luce. The house was acquired by the Oxford School, now the Kingswood-Oxford School, in 1924 and was used for a middle school. Additional facilities were attached to the original house over the years, but these were removed and the house’s exterior was restored when the entire property was converted for use by the town of West Hartford for a new middle School. The house was converted to office, library and classroom space and attached to the new Bristow Middle School building, off Highland Street, which opened in 2005. This example of adaptive reuse and restoration earned the architectural firm of Tai Soo Kim Partners a 2006 Historic Preservation Award from the Town of West Hartford.