The oldest house in Wallingford is the Nehemiah Royce House on North Main Street. Nehemiah Royce (who died in 1706) and his first wife Hannah, were among the first settlers of Wallingford. Royce‘s saltbox house was built in 1672. The house is also known as the Washington Elm House because it used to be next to the Washington Elm: in 1775, when George Washington was on his way to take command of the Continental Army in Massachusetts, he stopped in Wallingford to purchase gunpowder and addressed the people of the town in front of the house near the Elm. The house was moved to its present location in 1924. For a time it was a museum and then was used as a residence by Choate Rosemary Hall, until donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust in the 1990s.
I visited this old home in June,2012 and just now finished a detail rendering of the front door to included in the book AMERICAN DOORS to be published January 2013.Finding seventh century houses has been a challenge and even greater is to find doors from that period that have not been copied from another site. These are unique. The pannels follow the styling of the time with out coping anything else.
In Christ,
Peter Joel Harrison / Author
When I moved to Wallingford in 1974 from Germany, I was impressed with the saltbox house on Main Street and the condition of this wooden structure. I moved all over the world over the past 20+ years and when I came to visit Wallingford some months ago with my sons, we were pleased to see it in the same condition. Last week I brought my wife for the first time to Ct and was very displeased with the change of color seeing the house in white now. Why would anyone change the color of this historic site? It was as unnatural as blue oranges
The house has been painted white, as of August 2012, because the scientific analysis of the layers of paint on the house showed that, for most of its history, it had been painted white. It is only the last 40 years or so that it was painted red. So, the change in color was made to reflect the overall history of the house, not merely the last few years.
I grew up in Wallingford close-by on Dutton Street, and my brothers and I did chores for Miss Helen Royce when she summered in Wallingford. The house in the 1950s was unrestored and unpainted, the interior crowded with antiques, the property so overgrown that the house could hardly be seen from the street.
… the house was a place of adventure and history, and Miss Royce, always the teacher.
Is this house open for tours?
I’m interested in upcoming events at the house.