The Sturges Cottage (1840)

This Halloween, we look at one of the greatest and best documented examples of domestic Gothic Revival architecture in America. Like Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Sturges Cottage, built on Mill Plain Green in Fairfield in 1840-1841, is an early architect-designed house reflecting the principles of Andrew Jackson Downing in his work on country houses. The Sturges Cottage is the first documented commission for Joseph Collins Wells, an English immigrant who became a New York-based architect. He would go on to design Roseland Cottage in 1846. The Sturges Cottage was built as a summer residence for the New York merchant Jonathan Sturges and his wife, Mary Pemberton Cady Sturges. Sturges was a grandson of Jonathan Sturges, member of the Continental Congress. He was a philanthropist and patron of the arts who started his career working for Luman Reed, a prominent New York merchant and art collector. Sturges was a member of the Sketch Club, a precursor to the National Academy of Design. The Sturges family continues to occupy and maintain the house, to which major additions were made in 1846, 1883 and 1895. The 1883 addition (see below) features a pyramidal-capped clapboard tower, called the Book Tower because of the library occupying its fourth floor.