As Yale University expanded and acquired property along Prospect Street in New Haven, it became possible to design new campus quadrangles. The buildings of the Yale Divinity School were constructed in 1931 and designed by the architectural firm of Delano & Aldrich of New York. While based on Thomas Jefferson‘s plan for the University of Virginia, the Yale Divinity School quadrangle has much harder lines and sharper angles.
Designed by James Gamble Rogers to resemble a Gothic cathedral, but with a sixteen-story tower of book stacks, Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library is an imposing structure with rich ornamentation. Construction began in 1927 and the building was completed in 1930. There have been various additions made to the library over the years, including the 1968-1971 construction of the underground Cross Campus Library (now renamed the Bass Library). In 1992, the section of High Street in front of the library was closed to vehicles and was landscaped.
A late example of a Colonial-style house in what is known as the Cape Cod style, the Elias Sprague House in Coventry was built in 1821 and is located on South Street, not far from the Nathan Hale Homestead and the Strong=Porter House. Very little is known about the house’s builder, Elias Sprague. The home is now a property of the Coventry Historical Society, although that organization is currently seeking to sell the house in order to maintain its other buildings.
Another example of an “American Foursquare” home, the house at 1643 Boulevard in West Hartford was built around 1900 in what was the town’s first modern subdivision, begun in 1896. The area is now the Boulevard-Raymond Road Historic District. The house’s current owners won a 2007 West Hartford Historic Preservation Award for their construction of a new one-story addition to their Colonial Revival-influenced home which is compatible with the original structure and matches it seamlessly.
The house at 131 Maple Street (originally 125 Maple) in Bristol was built in 1820. Among its residents were Walter O. Perkins, an assistant engineer for the Bristol and Plainville Tramway Company and Albert Nettleton, whose relative Wilford H. Nettleton, lived nearby.
Possibly built by Chauncey Barber, the c.1835 C. Barber House, on Barber Hill Road in East Windsor, is a Greek Revival structure with a side-gable wing. The property has several nineteenth century outbuildings which may have been used for blacksmithing.
The Arthur Stiles House, built in 1916 on Main Street in South Windsor, is an example of the American Foursquare style of house. Popular throughout America from the 1890s to the 1930s, these economical cubes with hipped roofs were a reaction to the more complicated and expensive Victorian house styles. This Foursquare was constructed for Mary Holman, who sold it to her nephew Arthur Stiles for $2,000.
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