HistoricHomesCT.com

Some of the most important institutions in the state have gathered forces and put together the Connecticut History Online website. The site includes over 14000 images of photographs, drawings, and prints that may be searched by keyword, location, time period, etc. There are thousands of photos of old houses, many of which show families standing proudly in front of the their home (like the one below) In the 1880s and 1890s, itinerant photographers would travel the countryside, snapping photos of families in front of their houses, and then later sell the prints back to them. There aren’t a whole lot of wallet-size collections around, but many prints that were never purchased make up the core of the Northern Survey collection. Check out http://www.cthistoryonline.org and see these fascinating photos for yourself.

This is the house of A.W. Humphreys in Litchfield, probably taken around 1881. If you look closely at the tree in the foreground, you’ll notice a “For Sale” sign there. When this photo was taken, Prudential had only been around for 6 years and hadn’t started selling real estate yet, so this sign was about the best they could do. I’d love to talk with you about how things have changed, and about how much more I can do to help you sell your historic house!

How many 150 year-old historic houses are left in the area?

This is a map of Vernon in 1850. The town was certainly much more sparsely populated then, but there were still hundreds of households in the town. Today, only 70 single-family houses that appear on this map are still standing. That’s 70 out of the approximately 6040 single-family houses in today’s Vernon. That means that just a little more than 1% of all Vernon’s houses were built before 1850. Owners of these houses truly do have something special, rare, and worth preserving.

Some other local towns have more pre-1850 houses: Both Somers and Manchester have exactly 93, while Stafford tops the local list with 178. Some have fewer: In South Windsor, there are 67 standing, and East Windsor can only claim 39.

However many your town has, one thing is certain- the number of pre-1850 houses will never be higher than it is right at this moment. They just aren’t building 150 year-old houses any more! Each of these houses is worthy of appreciation and careful consideration of its future. If you know of an older house that we’re in danger of losing, please let me know!

Welcome and thank you for visiting my HistoricHomesCt blog.

You can look forward to posts on local events, preservation & renovation tips, guides to identifying local house styles, and of course, information on the local historic real estate market. I appreciate and invite any of your comments and suggestions. Tell me what you’re looking to find here, and I’ll do my best to incorporate it into the blog.

For now, you may be asking yourself-

“What exactly qualifies as a historic house?”

This house definitely qualifies. It’s the Henry Whitfield house in Guilford- the oldest house in Connecticut and the oldest stone house in New England. It’s first stones were laid in 1639, just as the Taj Mahal was being built. Today it is one of the state’s museums and a great place to visit. Check it out at http://www.whitfieldmuseum.org/.

Your house, though, doesn’t have to be famous, or lived in by a famous person, or the site of some historic event, or “the oldest” to be considered a historic home. Every old house carries with it at least some of its original character, and the story of its life can often still be read in its hewn rafters, horsehair plaster walls, finely crafted moldings, elaborate fireplace surrounds, or in the simple but elegant proportions of a home framed by hand by a country farmer. A “historic” home, then, is any home where its age has given it a character and aura that unmistakably separate it from the more mass-produced, generic, cookie-cutter houses we so often see today.

So how old does it have to be?

Many preservation organizations have decided that “historic” means at least 50 years old. I like to think of 1940 as a good break-off date for something “historic.” After 1940, you tend to get tract housing subdivisions and mass-produced housing. In the decades leading up to 1940, housebuilding had been shifting from a trade practiced by skilled craftsmen to an industry governed by mass production techniques and the profit needs of larger and larger corporations. The post WWII housing boom cinched the transition and much of the “character” of the historic home was left behind.

Experts, hobbyists, and afficionados will quibble, but the line has to go somewhere, and I’m setting mine at 1940.