Showing greater freedom than in his earlier design of the 1849 Norton House on Hillhouse Avenue, Henry Austin designed another Italian villa style house on Chapel Street in 1852. Built for the Cincinnati merchant Jonathan King, the house features a prominent central tower. It is commonly known by the name of its next resident, Oliver B. North, head of O.B. North, a saddlery and carriage hardware firm.
The John Schwab House, on Prospect Street in New Haven, was designed in the Tudor Revival style by R. Clipson Sturgis. Schwab was a professor of political economy at Yale who later became Librarian of Yale University. He was the author of History of the New York Property Tax (1890) and The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865: A Financial and Industrial History of the South During the Civil War (1901).
A good example of a Federal-style house (although the Palladian window may not be original to the house), the Jonathan Mix House, on Elm Street in New Haven, was built in 1799. In 1832, it was purchased by a nephew of Eli Whitney, Eli Whitney Blake, and was owned by members of his family until it was acquired by the Graduate Club in 1901. The next year, a rear addition was made, designed by Richard Clipston Sturgis of Boston.
James Abraham Hillhouse (1789-1841), a poet and friend of the important architects, Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, was instrumental as a wealthy patron in the development of the area around New Haven’s Hillhouse Avenue. The street had been originally laid out during the Federal-era town planning undertaken by James Abraham’s father, James Hillhouse. By the 1830s, the area had become a prestigious neighborhood, with numerous Greek Revival mansions being built under the direction of the younger Hillhouse. Among these was one for the wealthy widow Mary Pritchard, constructed using plans drawn up by Davis. Ira Atwater and Nelson Hotchkiss were contracted to build the Greek Revival home with tall Corinthian columns, which was completed in 1836. Like most of the other buildings around it, the house is now owned by Yale.
Located on Chapel Street, in New Haven’s Wooster Square neighborhood, the Willis Bristol House was designed by New Haven architect Henry Austin. Designed with a basic Italianate shape, the house has elaborate detailing in what has been described as either the Moorish Revival style or a style influenced by the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which was built in the Indo-Saracenic style. Yale has original plans and illustrations of the house and a there is also a HABS record. The house was built for Willis Bristol, of Bristol & Hall, boot and shoe manufacturers.
Henry Austin designed one of New Haven’s earliest houses to be modeled on the style of an Italian villa: the John Pitkin Norton House on Hillhouse Avenue. Built in 1848-49, the house was inspired by the design for a villa published by Andrew Jackson Downing. As seen in HABS documentation from 1964, the house had lost much of its original detailing by then. In 2003, exterior restorations were made. The house was built for the Yale science professor John Pitkin Norton, an agricultural chemist who wrote Elements of Scientific Agriculture. Some additions were later made, including the third floor. The house was acquired by Yale in 1923 and is now a building of the Yale School of Management.
The Timothy Bishop House is a great surviving example of New Haven’s Federal-style architecture. Located on Elm Street, it was constructed soon after the land was purchased in 1815. The street was lowered and widened in the nineteenth century, resulting in the loss of the home’s front lawn and necessitating the addition of the exposed basement floor. The house is now used as offices.
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