The house at 96 Union Street in Norwich was built in the Federal style around 1800 for Gilbert Brewster. It was later (around 1884) remodeled in the Georgian Revival style. Around 1910, an elevator was installed which continues to service the house. Read on to learn more about the house’s first resident, Gilbert Brewster…
Gilbert Brewster, who owned the Union Hotel in Norwichtown, was also an engineer. According to A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860, Vol. II (Third Edition, 1868), by J. Leander Bishop, in the year 1824, Brewster
patented an improvement in the wool spinning wheel, and […] received three patents, viz.: for a spinning machine and method of receiving rolls from the machine; for an improvement on spinning wool, and for a spindle for throstle spinning. These, and later improvements in cotton and wool spinning machines, by Mr. Brewster, came into quite extensive use, and a few years later were manufactured by him to a large extent at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
That same year, Niles’ Weekly Register quoted a letter to the editor, which had appeared in the National Intelligencer, under the heading “Brewster’s Machine,” as follows:
I saw, in your paper, this morning, an account of Mr. Gilbert Brewster’s improvements in machinery for spinning wool. He has made large machines at the price of &2,700, and has made this declaration that, if any person will take one of his machines and put it into full operation for two years, and give him the savings made between this machine and the old or common mode of spinning wool, he will give the machine without any further charge. The English spinners cannot spin for less than two pence or three pence per lb. Mr. Brewster’s machine facilitates the spinning so much, as to have reduced the price to one cent per lb.! And not only the best merino wool can be spun at this price, but even the finest Saxon wool, so much superior even to the merino, and of which the very finest and highest priced cloths are made. The English, the best manufacturers in Europe, will be left as much behind us soon, in the woollen, as they are at present in the coarse cotton goods.”
The account proceeds to say that Mr. Brewster lives in Norwich, Conn.; that be has already made 20,000 dollars worth of his machines, and has orders for more to a large amount. ☞ It is easy for a person, when he first sees one of these machines at work, to apprehend that it thinks!—so various are the motions performed by it
Brewster is most famously associated with his construction of the steamship Eagle, which had a very serious incident on its maiden voyage, as related in Frances Manwaring Caulkins’ History of Norwich (1866):
On the 15th of October, 1816, Capt. Bunker in the steamboat Connecticut ascended the Thames. […] A small steamer called the Eagle, 85 tons burden, and raising 38 lbs. to the inch, was soon afterward constructed at Norwich by Gilbert Brewster, an ingenious mechanician then living in Norwich. It was furnished with a small engine, and what was called a wooden boiler, but consisting mainly of an iron cylinder cased in wood. It went down the river on its first or trial trip, July 1, 1817, and met on the way the steamboat Fulton, Capt. Law, with streamers flying and music playing, in honor of James Munroe [sic], President of the United States, who was on board. The President was on a tour through the Northern States, and having arrived that day at New London, Capt. Law was making an excursion on the Thames to give him an opportunity of viewing the river; and the trip of the Eagle had been undertaken as a pleasure excursion, to meet and salute the President of the United States, while at the same time testing the character of the new boat. Capt . John Doane, a well-known packet-master, commanded, and fifty persons purchased tickets for the occasion.
The passengers, fifty in number, were in the cabin, in the rear of the boiler, when it was announced that the Fulton was approaching; upon which they hastened to gain the deck, and just as the last of the company [the cook] was ascending the stairs of the gangway, a terrific explosion took place. The end of the boiler was forced out, and sweeping through the cabin, went out at the stern, leaving scarcely a wreck of the partitions, furniture, and contents of the cabin behind. Even timbers and heavy planks were wrenched from their places, and scattered in fragments.
Had the passengers remained but a minute longer in the cabin, all must have perished. Fifty citizens of Norwich came within a minute of being swept together into eternity.
Some of them were wounded by flying fragments of wood, or bruised by being thrown down by the shock, but one of the crew, [the cook,] who was last upon the stairs, was the only person scalded, and he but slightly.
Notwithstanding this first calamity, the Eagle, as an early specimen of steamboat construction, reflected credit upon its ingenious builder. Afterwards fitted with a safe boiler, and its name changed to the Hancock, it made a serviceable freight-boat, and was employed for some years on another part of the coast.
Gilbert Brewster House (1800)
“Norwich a College Town?” A major school like the University of Connecticut could establish a satellite campus in the Norwich downtown district. This plan would encourage high tech and other companies to move to Norwich. Think about it. The Gilbert Brewster House is my favorite house in Norwich.