New Haven has a number of examples (pdf) of row houses. The connected row of Second Empire houses at 545-551 Orange Street are far more lavishly ornamented than the Middletown row houses I posted yesterday. These Orange Street houses were built in 1869-1871 by the builder Nelson Newgeon.
Urban-style row houses are not so common in Connecticut, but a notable example can be found at 71-83 Crescent Street in Middletown. These Mansard-roofed houses were built in 1866-1867 by Julius Hotchkiss, an entrepreneur and politician, who had been mayor of Waterbury and began serving in the United States House of Representatives the year the original houses were completed. The house at #71 was built in 1895 by his daughter, M. Amelia Vinal, who had married the lawyer, Charles Green Rich Vinal.
This week, we will be looking at the architecture of George Keller. Born in Ireland, Keller came to the United States when he was ten. Taking up the study of architecture, he came to Hartford to design monuments for J.G. Batterson, producing many memorials for Cedar Hill Cemetery. He would later design the cemetery’s Northam Memorial Chapel in 1882. Keller utilized a Gothic style and resisted the Classical and Colonial Revivals.
Primarily associated with churches and public buildings, Keller also designed houses, so we begin this week with the row houses he designed along Park Terrace in Hartford (above). These houses present a simplified form of Keller’s “Modern Gothic” style. They also display similarities with Keller’s design for the (no longer extant) Hartford High School building of 1883. He also designed a similar group of houses along Columbia Street in 1888-1889. The Park Terrace houses had a special significance for Keller, because the last house on the row (24 Park Terrace, below) became his own home as the fee for planning the project.
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