This stunning temple-front Greek Revival home on Main Street in Ridgefield, Connecticut is an absolute dream! The home was built in the mid-19th century for Henry Smith, who operated a shirt factory in town with his father. The house’s gable roof facing the street completes a pediment, which is supported by a projecting portico of four colossal Ionic columns. In the pediment, a gorgeous Palladian window adds so much character to the facade. I love a good temple-front classical home!
William Jones King (1803-1885) was born in Providence, Rhode Island as the eldest son of Elijah and Nancy King. His father Elijah was a master-mariner and a wealthy ship-owner, engaging in trade with the West Indies, likely partaking in the transport and sale of humans like many Rhode Island “merchants” at the time. Elijah was travelling to Martinique in 1815, when the Great Gale of 1815, the largest hurricane on record at the time in New England, intercepted the ships and capsized them. Elijah and his crew died at sea. After his father’s untimely death, which left the family poor, William (as the eldest at just 12 years old) became the sole support of his mother and three younger siblings at the time. William eventually became a clerk at the Union Bank in town, moving up the ranks until he became a cotton merchant. He had this home built a few years after his marriage to Lydia Gilbert. The house is an excellent example of a traditional Greek Revival home in the College Hill section of Providence with corner pilasters and central Ionic portico all sited high on a landscaped terrace behind an iron fence. The house is now owned by Brown University and has been renamed MacFarlane House after Walter Kilgore MacFarlane, Jr., a Brown alumnus in the class of 1923. The house today houses the main office of the Classics Department at Brown University.
In 1849, Jacob Weld Seaver (1820-1914) married Sarah Abby Weld and built this Greek Revival home, perched on a hill near the burgeoning Forest Hills Cemetery. The property originally extended all of the area of Orchardhill Road and the dead end streets that extend off of it, and included a stable, caretakers cottage, and at least two rental properties (this house may have been one of them). Jacob Seaver grew up in the neighborhood and attended Harvard, graduating in 1838. He became involved with the drygoods business and must have met his future wife from her father George F. Weld, who was a commission merchant in Boston. He went on to become the director of the Second National Bank of Boston, commuting into the city from the Forest Hills station. In the early 20th century, Seaver sold this property to a Thomas Minton, who subdivided some of the lot and built houses on the estate.
Cyrus Ingalls (1768-1832) moved to the wilderness of Maine from his relative comfort in Andover, MA at the end of the 18th century. When he arrived to Maine (which was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820), he built a grist mill on Moose Brook in what is now known as Denmark, Maine. Not far away, he built his homestead, a modest 1 1/2-story cape house on the newly laid Main Street where he raised his family. In the home, Cyrus had at least two sons, Cyrus Jr., who would inherit the homestead, and Rufus, who later served as Quartermaster General of the Union Army during the Civil War. After Cyrus’ death in 1832, the property was completely overhauled by Cyrus, Jr., who built a massive Greek Revival mansion likely in the 1840s or 50s, incorporating the former homestead as an ell (seen on the right in the image). The homestead remains an extremely significant architectural and historical landmark in this part of Maine, and is located across from the town’s Civil War Monument, possibly bankrolled by the Ingalls Family.
The Deacon Turner House, built in 1849, is an impressive Greek Revival house located at the Town Common in Willington, Connecticut. The Greek Revival portion was constructed onto an earlier house or store that was built 50 years prior. The one-story structure was likely moved and incorporated into the current house as a rear ell. The present house was designed by architect Augustus Treusdel of Coventry and built for Deacon John Turner by Emery Williams a well known local builder. John Turner was Deacon of the Willington Congregational Church, nearby.
This Greek Revival cottage appears to have been built in the 1830s or 40s based on the style, and early maps list the owner as W. Shaffer. It appears that William Shaffer (1799-1892) was hired by the West Willington Glass Works, which ran a factory across the street, and he either built this home or modernized an earlier home to give it the current configuration. The West Willington Glassworks was in operation 1817-1872 and made everything from inkwells to flasks to pickle jars. The house exhibits bold pilasters at the corners and at the entry with entablatures above them. Oh and that red is just beautiful!
Elijah Waters (1773-1846), a hardscrabble farmer in West Millbury inherited his father’s large farm and resided there for over thirty years before wanting something more his style. Unmarried and without children, Elijah (who was 72 at the time), had this impressive Greek Revival farmhouse constructed near his old family homestead. He was possibly looking to spend money saved up and without a wife or heirs to will it to. The massive temple-front Greek Revival mansion has a stunning doorway and six columns supporting a projecting pediment. Within a year after the home was built, Elijah died. The home was willed to his nephew, Jonathan Waters. The house is for sale for $384,000 which is a STEAL!
Alfred Smith (1809-1886) was known as “Newport’s Millionaire Real Estate Agent”, working in the mid-late 19th century to get some of America’s most well-connected upper-class acquire properties to build their summer cottages. In his early days, he prospered by assisting prospective developers and buyers to purchase house lots on newly platted streets, including Bellevue Avenue. By the time of his marriage in 1843, he built this stunning Greek Revival mansion, equipped with stunning proportions and corner pilasters. Decades later, to “keep up with the Joneses”, he modernized the house by extending the eaves and adding brackets and the addition of a belvedere at the roof. He was instrumental in much of Newport’s later development, even bankrolling the erection of a stone bridge on Ocean Avenue, to allow carriages and subsequent developable lots to extend in the previously untouched land in south and west Newport. He suffered a stroke in 1886, and died a year later, two years after his late wife. He funded a monument to the family, hiring Augustus St. Gaudens to furnish a stunning memorial “Amor Caritas” which stands in Island Cemetery in Newport. Mr. Smith’s estate was mentioned in the New York Times and stated there was no will, and his four living children would each get upwards of $1 Million (nearly $30 Million a piece based on inflation today)!
One of the nicest homes in Bangor, Maine, is the 1836 Thomas Hill House, a stunning Greek Revival home constructed of brick just outside downtown. The home was built for Thomas A. Hill (1783-1864), a lawyer and banker in town. He clearly made substantial money in his time in Bangor, because he hired architect Richard Upjohn, who was in town at the time overseeing designs for his first church St. John’s Episcopal Church (burned in 1911) and the Farrar Mansion. Thomas Hill suffered financial losses during the Panic of 1837 and the bank foreclosed on his properties. The bank allowed him to stay in the house and pay the insurance, heat and taxes until the home was sold by the bank to Samuel and Matilda Dale, who purchased the home in 1846. Mr. Dale came to Bangor in 1833 as a sail-maker. Eventually he would own grocery and ship chandlery businesses downtown before serving as Mayor of Bangor from 1863-1866 and again in 1871. The Sons of Union Veterans bought the house in 1942 and named it the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial. During 1952 the Bangor Historical Society was allowed to use the house, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1974 the house was deeded to the Bangor Historical Society, who occupy the home to this day.
The Zebulon Smith House in Bangor is one of the earliest temple-front Greek Revival homes built in the state of Maine. The house was constructed in 1832 for Zebulon Smith, a businessman who moved to the Maine frontier in the early 19th century, likely to get involved with a lumberyard as this section of the state shipped timber all over the region. The substantial home was built just south of downtown Bangor, and has survived fire and urban renewal. It sits alone in a sea of parking lots and industrial buildings in what was once likely a lovely neighborhood.
Buildings of New England 