At 1030 Main Street North, across from the “King’s Land” in Southbury, is the stately Georgian-style Benjamin Stiles House, built around 1787. Stiles was the son of Benjamin Stiles, Sr. who, according to the 1892 History of New Haven County, Vol. II,
was probably the first attorney in the town, where he was born in 1720. He graduated from Yale in 1740, studied law and was successful in his profession. His son, Benjamin Stiles, Jr., born in Southbury in 1756, also graduated from Yale at the age of 20 and became a lawyer. He had a large practice until his death in 1817.
The hip-roofed Benjamin Stiles House, occupied by the family until 1920, is said to have been designed by a French engineer in Rochambeau’s army, utilizing the metric system. The building is therefore often referred to as the Benjamin Stiles Metric House. In the early twentieth century, Southbury resident, photographer and antiquarian Wallace Nutting used the house in a number of his photographs.
