Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

New Haven

Aaron Skinner House (1832)

As with some other homes built on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven the 1830s, the Aaron Skinner House was designed by Alexander J. Davis, with significant involvement by James A. Hillhouse. Skinner, who briefly operated a boy’s school in his home, was persuaded to go along with Davis and Hillhouse’s expensive Greek Revival design. In the 1850s, Henry Austin altered the house by filling in the second story, which originally did not extend so far, to match the first story. This crated a more cube-like appearance. The house was later owned by the Trowbridge family and was bequeathed to Yale by Rachel Trowbridge. It now serves as Yale’s International Center for Finance.

Cambridge Arms (1925)

Constructed during New Haven’s apartment house building boom of the 1920s, the Cambridge Arms, on High Street, was designed by Lester Julianelle in the Jacobethan-style, to complement the Gothic architecture of nearby Yale University. Jacobethan was a more elaborate style than the humbler and more rustic Tudorbethan. The apartment building features the Jacobethan’s multifaceted turrets and varied bays, which helped reduce the structure’s massiveness on a residential street.

The Oliver B. North House (1852)

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 (1896)

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).

The Jonathan Mix House (1799)

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.

The Mary Pritchard House (1836)

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.

New Haven Free Public Library (1908)

The New Haven Free Public Library goes back to its original opening in 1887 in leased space in a building on Chapel Street. Having outgrown this location by the first few years of the twentieth century, a permanent building was constructed at the corner of Elm and Temple Streets. Built between 1908 and 1911, the building was designed by the prominent architect Cass Gilbert of New York, who had won the design competition. He created a Colonial Revival structure, set back from the street, that would harmonize with the early nineteenth century architecture nearby, including that of United Church on the Green.