The Colonial Revival home of Thomas MacDonough Russell, built in 1901-1902, is located on High Street in Middletown. Russell was a descendant of Samuel Russell, whose famous 1828 Greek Revival House is across the street. The Thomas MacDonough Russell House currently houses Wesleyan University‘s Center for African American Studies.
The brothers, Timothy and Benjamin Cheney, were important early American clockmakers. Timothy built the Cheney Family Homestead around 1785, and used a nearby brook to operate a grist mill that he built around 1790. After Timothy’s death in 1795, his oldest son, George Cheney, inherited the house. Among George‘s numerous children, his sons John and Seth became noted artists, while Charles, Ralph, Ward, Rush and Frank founded what would become the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company. Today the Homestead is museum, owned and operated since 1969 by the Manchester Historical Society.
An early brick building, constructed on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield, the John Francis Tavern of 1764 was built in the same year the town’s brick meetinghouse was completed. Like the John Robbins House, also used as a tavern and built a few years later in what would become Rocky Hill, the Francis Tavern features a stringcourse as a decorative element.
Nathaniel Shipman was a lawyer, Federal judge, and a founding partner of the law firm of Shipman & Goodwin, which is still prominent today. His house, on Charter Oak Place in Hartford, was built in 1860 in the Italianate style. Charter Oak Place was a fashionable neighborhood when Shipman moved there, and today has many surviving houses built between 1858 and 1875, including two Italianate double houses, the Kingsbury-Gatling House, the Robinson-Smith House and the Charles Northam House.
Wallace Stevens was one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, he came to Hartford in 1916 , where he worked at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, eventually rising to become a vice-president. In 1932, Stevens purchased a 1926 Colonial Revival style house (designed by William T. Marchant) at 118 Westerly Terrace in Hartford. As he did not drive, Stevens would regularly walk the two miles from his home to his office, often walking through nearby Elizabeth Park as well. He would compose poems in his head during these walks. A non-profit group called the Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens seeks to increase awareness in the Hartford area of Stevens, who died in 1955, and his work. The house is now owned by Christ Church Cathedral.
In 1767, John Robbins built his house, on Old Main Street in Rocky Hill, on land he had purchased from the Duke of Cumberland, who had earlier been granted the land by George II. The house was later used as a tavern, known as the Duke of Cumberland Inn. The brick Georgian-style house was updated in the Colonial Revival style in 1910.
Located on Palisado Avenue in Windsor, the Taylor Chapman House was constructed in 1764 in the Georgian style.