Bristol

Walter A. Ingraham House (1892)

The house constructed in 1892 for Walter A. Ingraham, on Prospect Place in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Bristol, is a rare survival of a type of high-style Queen Anne house. It has a base of granite and was built of brick with elaborately ornamented terra cotta detailing. The corner tower also features a distinctive copper roof. In the year the house was built, Walter Ingraham succeeded his father, Edward Ingraham, as president of the E. Ingraham Clock Company. Walter Ingraham’s brother and neighbor, William S. Ingraham, served as the company’s treasurer and secretary and the houses of both brothers were heated through pipes linked to the Ingraham Company’s furnaces.

William S. Ingraham House (1890)

The house of William S. Ingraham, who for 40 years was the general manager of the E. Ingraham Company, a Bristol clock and watch manufacturer, is on Summer Street in Bristol. Built in 1890, the house was designed by the New York architects Babb, Cook & Willard in the Shingle Style, a variant of the Queen Anne style with shingles featured prominently. The house was heated by pipes connected to the Ingraham factory, Bristol’s first example of heating a house from outside, a practice to be followed by other factory owners in the city. It was also one of the first houses in Bristol to be electrified.

J.C. Brown House (1833)

The J.C. Brown House was originally built, on Maple Street in Bristol, for the clockmaker Lawson Ives in 1833. Lawson and his uncle Chauncey Ives began the clock-making firm of C. and L.C. Ives in 1830. The company eventually failed in the wake of the 1837 Panic and ensuing depression. The house was sold in 1844 to J.C. Brown, another clockmaker, who often had the image of his house painted tablet of his ogee shelf clocks. After his bankruptcy in 1856, Brown’s clock company was bought by the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Company (later to become the Sessions Clock Company). The Greek Revival style Brown House has two entrances with columned porticos: the one facing Maple Street (west elevation) has Ionic columns and the one facing Woodland Street (south elevation) has Doric columns. The house has been converted for use as offices.

Beleden (1910)

Beleden, one of Connecticut’s great high-style mansions, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol. Designed by the architect Samuel Brown of Boston, Beleden was built for William Edwin Sessions, of the Sessions Clock Company. The Sessions family operated a foundry that had been producing castings for the E.N. Welch Company, a Forrestville clock manufacturer. Around 1900, Sessions purchased E.N. Welch and in 1903 renamed it the Sessions Clock Company. In 1906, William E. Sessions, who had been living in a house on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, purchased the adjacent house and land of Nathan L. Birge. The Birge House was torn down and over the next 4 years Beleden, completed in 1910, was constructed. The U-shaped brownstone mansion was once the centerpiece of a large estate, which featured formal and English gardens, a pool, greenhouses and grape arbors. These former grounds were later divided by Beleden Gardens Drive and built-up with smaller homes. Two buildings, a coachman’s lodge and a gardener’s cottage, were originally part of the estate but are now separated from the main house by newer structures.

John Birge House (1880)

John Birge was a state senator and president of N. L. Birge and Sons, a knitting mill, which had been founded by his father, Nathan L. Birge. His grandfather was John Birge, who had played an important role in Bristol’s clockmaking industry. Birge‘s house, on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, was built around 1880. After his death, the house was purchased by William J. Tracy, who would found Tracy-Driscoll & Co. in 1920. Note the house in the upper-left of the historic image linked to above.

Castle Largo (1880)

Castle Largo is an unusual edifice, located at the intersection of Center and Main Streets in the Federal Hill area of Bristol. A miniature castle featuring elements of the Gothic Revival, Italianate and Second Empire styles, it was constructed in three stages in 1880 and is one of a number of interesting houses in Bristol designed by the local inventor Joel T. Case. After living in it for a few months, Case sold it to Charles Henry Wightman, a 24-year-old businessman.

J. R . Holley House (1898)

Designed by Stanley S. Covert, the 1898 Queen Anne-style house of J. R. Holley, who was a vice president of the Bristol Brass and Clock Company, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol.