The Queen Anne-style house of Dr. Michael Gill, who was a prominent Hartford physician, is on the the West Hartford side of Prospect Avenue. It also features aspects of the shingle and Colonial revival styles. The house was the childhood home of the doctor’s son, Brendan Gill, who attended the Kingswood School nearby and became a well-known writer and contributer to New Yorker magazine. He was also a noted preservationist.
A Queen Anne style home, which also features elements of the Gothic Revival, Shingle and Colonial Revival styles, the Henry Dwight Bradburn House, on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, is an eclectic mix. The house dates to 1900, the year Bradburn retired as manager of the Nonotuck Paper Company of Holyoke, Mass. The house bears a strong resemblance to the W. F. Clark House in Springfield, Massachusetts.
This week we look at houses on Prospect Avenue, the border between Hartford and West Hartford. An eclectic mix of large houses were constructed here in the later nineteenth century. One of the earliest is that of Burdett Loomis, an inventor and manufacturer of gas plant machinery. A civic leader in Hartford, in 1873 he also opened a trotting horse park on New Park Avenue. This would later evolve into Charter Oak Park, which early in the twentieth century would feature Luna Park, a popular amusement park. In the late nineteenth century, Prospect Avenue was considered to be in the countryside, and around 1885, Loomis bought a c. 1845 Greek Revival farmhouse and transformed it into his country estate by adding a new Queen Anne-style section on the front.
The house of William S. Ingraham, who for 40 years was the general manager of the E. Ingraham Company, a Bristol clock and watch manufacturer, is on Summer Street in Bristol. Built in 1890, the house was designed by the New York architects Babb, Cook & Willard in the Shingle Style, a variant of the Queen Anne style with shingles featured prominently. The house was heated by pipes connected to the Ingraham factory, Bristol’s first example of heating a house from outside, a practice to be followed by other factory owners in the city. It was also one of the first houses in Bristol to be electrified.
Clifford S. Brown was the first owner of an 1876 Queen Anne-style house on Summer Street in Bristol, which was designed by Joel T. Case. Case’s houses are known for having unusual features, with this example having a square corner tower, uncommon for the Queen Anne style. The house was later sold to the inventor Alfred F. Rockwell, who lived there with his wife Nettie. He would later build a large mansion in Bristol, called Brightwood, which has since been destroyed.
Born in Woodhull, New York, Albert Fenimore Rockwell worked at various trades in different places, including several years in Florida in the fruit and hardware businesses. Leaving Florida because of yellow fever, he came to Bristol in 1888 and, in the next year, founded the New Departure Manufacturing Company with his brother Edward. Originally set up to produce a new doorbell based on clockworks, Rockwell’s company would become very successful making bicycle lamps and coaster brakes, which Rockwell patented with Harry P. Townsend. Later, New Departure became the world’s largest producer of ball bearings. Rockwell also produced various automobiles between 1908 and 1911, including the Rockwell taxicab and various Houpt-Rockwell models. In 1913, he was ousted from New Departure, which later became part of General Motors, but went on to purchase the Marlin Firearms Company, manufacturing Marlin-Rockwell machine guns and automatic rifles during the First World War. Before his death in 1925, he donated land for the city to build what is now called the Memorial Boulevard Middle School, on the road called Memorial Boulevard. He also donated the land for Rockwell Park.