The house at 107 Cornwall Avenue in Cheshire was built in 1855. The house has been renovated a number of times over the years. The current doorway and front entry porch are thought to be the work of local architect Alice Washburn.
One of the many Colonial Revival houses designed by Alice Washburn in the New Haven area is one at 105 Mill Rock Road in Hamden. Washburn was possibly inspired by the Canterbury style of Federal house, as seen in examples like the Prudence Crandall and Captain John Clark Houses in Canterbury. The house in Hamden was built in 1931 for Clyde M. Hill, professor of Secondary Education at Yale University.
At 152 Cornwall Avenue in Cheshire is an 1828 house, built by Amasa Preston. A settler from Wallingford, Preston was on the building committee for the Methodist Church, constructed in 1834. The house had two rooms added to the rear in 1910. Owned by the Preston and Trithall family, the house was the childhood home of architect Alice Washburn. A former high school principal in the 1890s, in 1919 Washburn began designing Colonial Revival houses in Cheshire and surrounding communities. She continued until the Great Depression forced her retirement in 1933. Around 1920, she renovated the Preston House in the Colonial Revival style, creating a beautiful front entry featuring a semicircular fan above the door. Today, the Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects sponsors the annual Alice Washburn Awards for excellence in traditional house design. (more…)
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.
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