Welcome to Porter, Maine! The town is located on the Maine/New Hampshire border and was first called Portersfield Plantation. Porter was incorporated in 1807 and named after its first proprietor, Dr. Aaron Porter (1752-1837). The Porter Meetinghouse was built beginning in 1818 and it is said that it was not completely finished until 1824. The original congregation was a Freewill Baptist organization led by Reverend Jeremiah Bullock, and were known locally as “Bullockites“. The structure housed the Baptists and town meetings as needed. The plain vernacular, meetinghouse is typical of many early meetinghouses of the period in rural New England. The inside retains its original character with its space as a single large chamber with a gallery above on three sides. The walls are plaster, much of it original, with trowel marks visible. The main floor is populated with original box pews and a replica pulpit. The structure is a rare survivor!
Isaac Lord (1772-1838) was born in Maine, but would spend much of his time transforming the small town of Effingham, New Hampshire. Isaac married the love of his life, Susanna Leavitt in Exeter in 1793 and the couple moved to Effingham, living and working in a tavern he built. Isaac prospered as an innkeeper, merchant, farmer, and entrepreneur, becoming Effingham’s wealthiest citizen, making the village he owned buildings to be called Lord’s Hill in his name. From 1818 to 1822, Isaac and Susanna lived in Portland, but he was ridiculed for “having money but no culture”. Growing tired of the city, he decided to return to Effingham. Mrs. Lord found the village too quiet and longed for the social life to be had in Portland, Maine. To convince his wife to remain with him, Isaac promised her a mansion that rivaled the homes in wealthy seaports like Portland and Portsmouth and began working on his mansion in Effingham in 1822. After years, the massive estate was completed, but Susanna remained in Portland. A heartbroken Isaac moved into the large mansion and continued business until his death in 1838. The Isaac Lord House consists of a three-story main block with a grand cupola on its roof and a three story ell to its rear. Stables and a carriage house are also on the lot today. I would do anything to see the inside of this beauty!
The small town of Effingham, New Hampshire, is the home to the state’s first Normal School. This building was originally constructed in 1819 as a vernacular, Federal period academy for the youth in the rural town of Effingham on land formerly owned by wealthy resident Isaac Lord. A normal school for the training of teachers was established on the school building’s second floor in 1830 with James W. Bradbury, a Bowdoin College graduate, to head it. Bradbury, later a United States Senator, took the position only on condition that it should be for the instruction and training of teachers, a novel idea at the time. The school, like many small academy buildings of the period, eventually closed. The building is now managed by the Effingham Historical Society.
Isaac Lord (1772-1838), the namesake of Lord’s Hill, came to Effingham, New Hampshire by 1791. An enterprising man, he was the most important figure in the village’s early history and in its architectural development. By 1792, Lord opened Effingham’s first store on the Hill, and soon thereafter began building a house that also served as the local tavern, this Federal style structure. As Lord prospered as a merchant and innkeeper, he enlarged the Tavern with a large ell connecting the main block to the 3-story barn. The fine Federal tavern was embellished with a vestibule and a triple window. The high quality of the Tavern foretold the character and scale of Isaac Lord’s later buildings nearby. The Tavern stayed in the extended family until 1903. Throughout the 20th century, the property was used as an inn and restaurant, including a stint as a dance hall. By the 21st century, though, deferred maintenance and successive attempts to fix the building ended in mortgage sales, foreclosure, and most recently, a tax deed, the the Town of Effingham recently acquired the property with the aim to restore the significant building. It was sold to a private owner in May 2024 and awaits its future. The Lord’s Tavern was listed in the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s ‘Seven to Save’, to advocate for its preservation and funding.
The Drake Store is a vernacular, early 19th century commercial building located in the center of Effingham, New Hampshire. According to local sources, the building was erected around 1816 by Weare Drake, an original settler of the town at age 78, and his 23-year-old grandson, Thomas Parsons Drake. The store sold provisions and was home to a post office, when Thomas Drake served as the town’s postmaster. Within a few years, the store fell into disuse and the building was fitted up as an academy known as the Carroll Literary Institute. Due to insufficient enrollment, in the 1850’s, it was again occupied as a store by Alexander Mellen Drake (hence the sign) and changed hands several times before being purchased by Grange No. 313 in 1913, operating as a grange hall for local farmers. The building was given by the Grange to the Town in 1994 and purchased from the Town for $1 by the Preservation Society in 2002. The Preservation Society has been restoring the building through capital campaigns and grants and the old store shines once again!
Before the Centre Turnpike was laid out in 1808, better-connecting Middlebury, Vermont to towns east of the Green Mountains, visitors would have to travel hours longer to divert around the mountains. This new route cut right through the small village of Hancock, Vermont and the town prospered as a result. Along the route, this vernacular, Federal period tavern was built shortly after the turnpike aimed to take advantage of the new visitors driving through the town. This tavern/inn was operated for a time by a J. E. Wright as a hotel and the building has a perfect wrap-around porch.
This large Federal style home in Rockport is a rare extant example of a spite house in Maine. The story goes… James McCobb, an Irish immigrant, arrived in what is now Phippsburg in 1731. Living in a log cabin with his Irish-born wife, Beatrice, he raised a large family of 10 children, among whom was Thomas McCobb (1778-1815), who became a sea captain. In 1774, James built a handsome Federal period house for his second wife, Hannah Nichols, with whom he had three children (twin daughters, and a second son, also named Thomas). He married a third time in 1782 to Mary Langdon Storer Hill, who had a son, Mark Langdon Hill, from a previous marriage, who ended up marrying one of McCobb’s daughters, one of the twins, who was a half-sister to Thomas. While Captain Thomas McCobb was away at sea, the Hills, which included Thomas’ half-sister/wife of Mark Langdon Hill, broke his father’s will and took the homestead for themselves. When Captain Thomas McCobb returned from his voyage and discovered what had happened, he vowed to build the most beautiful house in Maine and one that would dwarf the one he had been deprived of. The house was promptly dubbed “The Spite House”.
This house was built in 1806. Ironically, Captain Thomas apparently never married and left no descendants, as a result, when he died in 1815 in Boston, the house was given over to the Hill family. The house had fallen into disrepair and was purchased in 1925 by Donald Dodge of Philadelphia, who moved the house, to save it from demolition, over 85 miles by boat from Phippsburg to Rockport. He also transported a 1796 house from South Harpswell to be used in the construction of the wings that were subsequently added onto the Spite House. The property now sits on Beauchamp Point, not visible from the street, in a desirable enclave of summer residences, with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean.
Another of the stunning early 19th century homes in the charming town of Chaplin, Connecticut is this transitional Federal/Greek Revival home built around 1830. The house appears to have been built for Darius Knight (1792-1882), a Deacon at the nearby Congregational Church. Of an interesting note, the Knight House is located across the street from the E. W. Day House, thus the intersection was colloquially known as the Knight and Day Corner. The house’s gable-end form with gable reading like a pediment supported by corner pilasters are all clearly Greek Revival style, but the fan lights in said gable and as a transom window are holdouts of the tried-and-true Federal style which dominated up until that point. What a great house!
Years before the small town of Chaplin, Connecticut was incorporated as a town, early residents here had this Congregational church built at the future town’s center. The following decades would see the village develop into a cohesive street of Federal and Greek Revival style dwellings and shops, many of which remain to this day. The church was technically completed by 1815, but it would be decades until funding was acquired to add the steeple, pews, and other finishings for the edifice. The structure sits on a raised stone foundation and is prominently sited on the town’s main street.
The Witter House of Chaplin, Connecticut was built in 1821 and owned by three generations of medical doctors all named Orin Witter. The Witter House stands on Chaplin Street and is among the finest Federal style residences in this part of the state. Orin Witter had the house built just before the town was incorporated in 1822 and would also serve as the town’s first Clerk. The Witter House is five bays wide, with paired chimneys at the ends of the hip roof. The centered entrance is flanked by arched sidelight windows and has a fanlight above. The fanlight detail is echoed by semi-elliptical fan louvers above each window. The roof has a monitor section at its center. Due to its architectural merit and state of preservation, the house was individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Buildings of New England 