Built in 1888, the Alanson Trask House, on Gillett Street in Hartford‘s Asylum Hill neighborhood (pdf), combines elements of the Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles. The house has an impressively broad entrance arch and terra-cotta tiles covering the second story.
The Colonial Revival-style house at 100 Norwood Road in the Hartford Golf Club Historic District in West Hartford was built in 1930. The house‘s design was modeled on George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon by architect Walter Crabtree. Another home modeled on Mount Vernon is not too far away at 1430 Asylum Avenue in Hartford.
Built around 1832, the Catherine and Dency Parsons House, on Main Street in Durham, was built for two sisters around 1832. After 1868, the house was owned by the Parmelee family into the early twentieth century. The Greek Revival house has a shed-roofed porch along the front facade, added later. At one time the house had a stuccoed exterior.
The Colin M. Ingersoll House is a grand Chateauesque mansion on Whitney Avenue in New Haven. Designed by Joseph W. Northrop of Bridgeport, it strongly stands out, with its bold colors, tall hip roof, prominent tower and French medieval decoration, including fleurs de lis. The house was built for Colin M. Ingersoll, Jr., chief engineer of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He was the son of Colin Macrae Ingersoll (1819-1903), who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The house is now used for offices.
Deepwood Drive, off Whitney Avenue in Hamden and adjacent to the town’s border with New Haven, was developed in the 1920s on on an old estate. Known architecturally for its many modern houses, the street also has older-style homes and was landscaped to have a rural appearance. Many of the homes are oriented away from the street, often obscuring them from the road. One such house, at 50 Deepwood Drive, was built in 1929 by Thornton Wilder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist. Built as home for himself, his parents and sisters with the royalties from his famous novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), Wilder referred to it as “the house the bridge built.” Wilder had a view of New Haven and East Rock from his English style country home, which sits on the edge of a promontory. He shared the house with his sister, Isabel, until he died in 1975. Thornton Wilder furniture and memorabilia from the house’s study are on display at the Miller Memorial Central Library in Hamden.
The Harmon Hamlin House, on Dowd Avenue in Canton, was built in 1809. For many years it was known as the Biglow House after a tin peddler who lived there. The house has Greek Revival features, probably added in the mid-nineteenth century, including a wide cornice, pedimanted side gable and a doorway with pillasters, sidelights and a Greek entablature.
Beginning in 1736, residents of what would become Marlborough made repeated petitions to the Connecticut General Assembly to form their own Congregational Society, which was eventually incorporated in 1747. According to Miss Mary Hall, in the Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), “The society without doubt took its name from Marlborough, Mass.; the largest tax-payer in the society being David Bigelow, a representative of a family conspicuous in the history of the old town of Marlborough, Mass. Ezra Carter, another influential member of the new society, came from the same town.” A meeting house was begun in 1748 and, again quoting from Hall, “The work of framing, raising, and covering the house was now begun, the expense being defrayed by levying a tax of four shillings on the pound. A little later in the same year the windows were glazed. This seems to have exhausted their resources, and nothing more was done until April, 1754,” when a pulpit, seats and pews were installed. Work continued over the years, until the “painting and underpinning of the meetinig-house and the laying of its steps made this remarkable structure complete in 1803. It had been fifty-four years in building, and was finished by laying the corner-stone last.” The church was completed the same year Marlborough was incorporated as a town. By 1841, a new church was needed. The original was torn down and the current Marlborough Congregational Church building was constructed in 1842, just back from the site of its predecessor above South Main Street. The original steeple was toppled in the Hurricane of 1938 and and was rebuilt.
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