Gridley-Case Cottages (1771)

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The Gridley and Case Cottages, on Main Street in Farmington, were constructed in the late eighteenth century and are rare surviving examples of modest workmen’s cottages. The two cottages were built sometime after 1771, when John Case purchased the land. Case himself lived in his homestead nearby and workmen occupied the cottages. At some point, Alexander Gridley started living in the smaller of the two, which he sold it to John’s son, Coral Case, in 1797. It was then used as a hat shop by Coral, who died in 1800. Many people owned or lived in the cottages over the years, until they were sold, in 1970, to James McArthur Thomson, who was living in the Gen. George Cowles House. He worked to preserve the cottages, which were left to the town at his death in 1993 and were eventually donated to the Farmington Historical Society in 1998. The society’s offices are now in the larger cottage, while the smaller cottage is rented out as a residence.

Oldgate (1790)

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In 1786, the wealthy Farmington merchant Zenas Cowles bought a house on Main Street, at Meadow Lane, that had been lived in by blacksmith Isaac Bidwell (and earlier by the town’s first two ministers). Zenas’s brother, Solomon Cowles, lived in a house just across Meadow Road. In 1790, Zenas employed the British architect William Sprats to build a newer and grander house around the older one. Sprats had been a British officer during the Revolutionary War, but was captured and remained in America after the war. He may have employed former Hessian soldiers, who had also been prisoners, as carpenters in the construction of the house. Designed in an elaborately detailed Georgian-style, the house is known as Oldgate because of the property’s front gate, which features a broken scroll pediment and an Asian design signifying “peace and prosperity.” In the nineteenth century, the house was home to Thomas Cowles, a prominent Farmington resident, politician and abolitionist. A later owner of the house was Rear Admiral William Sheffield Cowles, whose wife, Anna Roosevelt Cowles, was the sister of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Farmington in October of 1901.

The Lewis Walpole Library (1784)

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Maj. Solomon Cowles of Farmington, a wealthy merchant and Revolutionary War General, built a Georgian-style house on Main Street in 1784, recognizable today for its long columned porch. The home remained in the Cowles family until it was purchased by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis in 1926. Lewis was a 1918 Yale graduate, collector, author, and the editor of The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence. He remodeled the house in 1928 to house the Walpole Collection he had gathered, consisting of rare books and manuscripts, relating to Horace Walpole and his times, and “the largest and finest collection of eighteenth-century British graphic art outside the British Museum.” Lewis and his wife, Annie Burr Auchincloss Lewis (sister of Hugh Auchincloss of Newport’s Hammersmith Farm), lived in a house next door. Lewis died in 1979 and the library, with its collection and grounds, was given to Yale University and is now a department of the university’s library. Known as the Lewis Walpole Library, the site includes the Cowles House, the adjacent Root House (where visiting scholars can stay) and the Day-Lewis Museum of Indian Artifacts. The property recently underwent a major renovation project.

For those interested in Horace Walpole, nineteenth century editions of his works can be found through Google Books, including his well-known Castle of Otranto, as well as collections of his letters and memoirs. He also wrote Anecdotes of Painting in England and A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England.

The Corner House (1783)

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Located at the corner of Main Street and Farmington Avenue in Farmington, the Corner House was built around 1783, perhaps incorporating part of an earlier dwelling that was on the property when it was acquired by the brothers, Daniel and Eleazer Curtiss, in 1774. In 1807, the house was bought by Elijah Cowles, Jr. and Jonathan Cowles. In more recent times the building was a restaurant. Today it is used for offices and the Farmington Inn is attached to it.

The Henry Mygatt House (1833)

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Built between 1833 and 1849 on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, the Greek Revival-style home of Henry Mygatt and his wife, Sarah Woodruff was later owned (from 1936 to 1954) by James Thrall Soby, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who commissioned the architect Henry-Russell Hitchcock to design a new rear wing to the house to serve as an art gallery. An owner in the late 1970s was Alexander Haig, Jr., when he was Director of United Technologies.