The Amos Morris Hathaway House, at 191 Prospect Street in Willimantic, is a Queen Anne house built in 1889. Hathaway was an executive with the Willimantic Linen Company, which later became American Thread Company. In 1957, Hathaway’s surviving daughters, Kate and Marion, deeded the house to the city to become a children’s library: the Taylor-Hathaway Memorial Library. It was named in honor of Dr. Daniel Taylor, Kate’s late husband, and her brother Edgar, who had been an office manager at American Thread. Dr. Taylor was a dentist and expert on telescopes who practiced in New York City and Willimantic and who also owned a home in Noank. The house served as a library for ten years, when the children’s collection was moved to the new library on Main Street.
Always love these type of old houses, with part of the roof being cone-shaped. It looks like it could use a paint job, though. Know of any plans to do so?
Nope, its up to the owners. Their are many nicely painted Victorian houses in Willimantic, but also many that are not being kept up in good condition.
We would love to paint this thing…just waiting for a spare $45,000 to do it. How’s that? Remember Tom Hanks and the Money Pit? This is every bit of that. Cheers.
I lived in this place in the mid-90’s, this place was haunted and often visited by bats during the summer.
My wife and I bought this place in April 1971 From the city of Willimantic.
We sold it in 1973 when the price of oil went up to .37 cents a gallon. I had been paying .14 cents a gallon and the embargo was coming…. Yes we had both bats and ghosts. Also, a great number of good times.
It has been painted.
Bats, yes. Ghosts? Haunted How?
Yes, it was haunted. My little sister and I saw it once in the middle of the night. We both woke up when we heard a loud noise–like a door slamming. When we looked out the window we saw a woman with a night gown “floating” in the back yard. She looked at us and we ducked down. When we got the nerve to look back out, she had disappeared. We lived there with our family from 1971 – 1973. Lots of bats. Tons of great times.
Rented this from the Lonchars in the 90’s for college. Never saw a ghost although some people did tell me they did. We did get a bat once. I wasn’t there for it, but I was told that it flew in circles in the first floor. It has since been painted a gray color though we lived in the above pic. Some good memories.
Haunted? Yes, but I never felt in danger. Several of us lived here in college in the 90s and put a lot of time in to fix the place up as best we could. We had a lot of fun here, although lots of unexplained occurrences. Shaking beds, glowing orbs on the wall, candles Re-lighting, doors violently slamming at times. Once we even experienced coins shoot out from a wall, as if it were a portal to somewhere else. I know this all sounds crazy, we thought it was too. My friend lived in the attic and found a room with big pillars and lots of bat guano. The bats were often active in the house during summer nights, coming out in bedrooms and the basement. I remember there being a “legend” when we moved in about some young girl tragically falling down the back stairs that went to the kitchen. Not sure if that is real, or just more of a ghost story. We heard the house was a children’s library at one time and had also heard something about a sea captain owning it, but IDK. Definitely see how it could be a money pit now.