House at 130 Mohegan Avenue | |
Location | 130 Mohegan Ave., New London, Connecticut, United States |
---|---|
Coordinates | 41°22′29″N72°6′9″W / 41.37472°N 72.10250°W |
Built | 1933 |
Architect | Howard T. Fisher |
Architectural style | International style |
NRHP reference No. | 08001379 [1] |
Added to NRHP | October 28, 2009 |
The House at 130 Mohegan Avenue, also known as Rusty, the House of Steel or Steel House, is a prefabricated, modular, International Style house in New London, Connecticut, United States. [2] The House was designed by Howard T. Fisher, who founded General Houses, Inc. in 1932. Winslow Ames, a professor of art history at Connecticut College and the art director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, had the home built after attending the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. The House is a single story 21 feet (6.4 m) by 37 feet (11 m) rectangular steel prefabricated home that rests upon a concrete slab. It originally had a flat roof and included an attached garage. Throughout the years, the house has undergone significant alteration, including the addition of a gable roof.
The house was used by Ames, and later by Connecticut College, as a rental property, until the structure was slated for demolition in 2004. The push to restore the house is credited to Doug Royalty, who worked with the college's Abigail Van Slyck. Completed in 2013, restoration cost $500,000 and involved several phases, including the dismantling, transportation, and reassembly of the house. The house was added to the Connecticut Historic Register in July 2007 and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 2009.
The house was designed by Howard T. Fisher, who founded General Houses, Inc., and commissioned by Winslow Ames, a professor of art history at Connecticut College and the art director of the Lyman Allyn Museum. [3] [4] [5] In 1933, Ames decided to construct two houses on the museum-owned property after seeing prefabricated homes at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. [5] Ames had a strong interest in the Modernism movement and believed such houses would become predominant. [4]
Completed in November 1933 and costing about $4,500 in total, the House is a single story 21 feet (6.4 m) by 37 feet (11 m) rectangular steel prefabricated home that rests upon a concrete slab. [6] [7] The house is frameless, with the weight borne by 4 feet (1.2 m) by 9 feet (2.7 m) steel panels; the exterior panels are flanged and vertically bolted through wooden T-shaped pieces. [6] The interior wall panels are made of steel and filled with insulation. [6] Originally the house had a flat roof, but it changed to a gable roof at an unknown time. [6] The house has two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open living-dining-kitchen space. [6] The house also has an attached garage. [6]
After its completion, Winslow Ames used the house as a rental property until 1949 when he went to work in a museum in Springfield, Missouri. [7] [8] The house was sold to Connecticut College. [8] Connecticut College continued to rent it to staff and students until 2004, when plans were made to demolish the house. [6] Changing the flat roof to a gable roof was a significant alteration from the original plan; the date of the alteration is unknown, but it preceded 1995. [4] [6]
In 2008, an article in The Day stated that the push to restore the house came from conservation specialist Doug Royalty, who was researching prefabricated homes from the 1920s and 1930s. [9] Royalty approached Abigail Van Slyck, the chairwoman of Connecticut College's art history department and architectural studies program about the house. [9] The Day referred to the house's historic value as a new discovery, but its history was included in the Winslow Ames House National Register of Historic Places nomination in 1995. The Winslow Ames House nomination detailed the House's origin, but criticized its gable roof modification. [4] [9] After its re-discovery, Connecticut College began collecting grants to restore the house under the direction of Royalty and Van Slyck. [9] Royalty stated that the House and Winslow Ames House are very rare, with only a few surviving examples in the United States. [9]
In April 2007, the leaking roof was repaired. [10] In December 2007, the House received a $28,500 grant from the Dr. Scholl Foundation. [9] [10] The grant was used to complete lead-paint abatement, which would make conducting other restoration work safer. [9] By 2010, the Dr. Scholl Foundation granted another $50,000 and a family foundation provided another $50,000 for the restoration. [11] It was reported that other college grants totaling $15,500 were given for preservation planning, in part by the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. [11] It was reported in May 2010 that a matching grant of $101,500 was given to Connecticut College from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, which provided the funding for the next phase of renovations for restoring the House. [12]
The celebration for the House's completed restoration was held in October 2013. [13] The cost of restoration totaled around $500,000. The building was dismantled, transported to Philadelphia for restoration and treatment for rust resistance, and then reassembled on the campus. [13] The work was performed by Milner + Carr, a conservation company. [13] The house was added to the Connecticut Historic Register in July 2007 and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 2009. [9] [14]
The House of the Seven Gables is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, named for its gables. It was made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables. The house is now a non-profit museum, with an admission fee charged for tours, as well as an active settlement house with programs for the local immigrant community including ESL and citizenship classes. It was built for Captain John Turner and stayed with the family for three generations.
Connecticut Hall is a Georgian building on the Old Campus of Yale University. Completed in 1752, it was originally a student dormitory, a function it retained for 200 years. Part of the first floor became home to the Yale College Dean's Office after 1905, and the full building was converted to departmental offices in the mid-twentieth century. It is currently used by the Department of Philosophy, and its third story contains a room for meetings of the Yale Faculty of Arts & Sciences, the academic faculty of Yale College and the Graduate School.
The Nehemiah Hubbard House is a historic house at the corner of Laurel Grove and Wadsworth Street, Middletown, Connecticut. Built in 1745, it is a center-chimney colonial style house built of clapboard siding and brownstone foundation with wood shingle roof; using a structural system of wood frame, post and beam with gable roof. It was built as a residence which is its current use.
The Charles Rice Ames House is a historic residence in the city of Belpre, Ohio, United States. Built in 1843 in the Greek Revival style of architecture, the house has been named the region's most outstanding Greek Revival structure.
The House on Ellicott's Hill, also known as Connelly's Tavern, James Moore House, or Gilreath's Hill, is a historic house museum at 211 North Canal Street in Natchez, Mississippi. Built in 1798, it is the oldest surviving building in Natchez from its early territorial period. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and a Mississippi Landmark in 2001.
The Smith–Harris House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Thomas Avery House, is a 2+1⁄2-story clapboarded Greek Revival home on Society Road in East Lyme, Connecticut. It is believed that the farmhouse was built in 1845–1846 as a wedding gift for Thomas Avery and Elizabeth Griswold. It remained in the Avery family until 1877, when it was purchased by William H. Smith. By the 1890s, the farm was managed by Smith's younger brother, Herman W. Smith, and nephew, Frank A. Harris. In 1900, the two married Lula and Florence Munger, sisters, and both resided in the house. In 1955, the house was sold to the Town of East Lyme, and the sisters continued to live in the house until requiring a nursing home. The house was saved from demolition by citizens and restored. It opened on July 3, 1976, as a historic house museum, operated and maintained by the Smith–Harris House Commission and the Friends of Smith–Harris House. It is open from June through August and throughout the year by appointment. The Smith–Harris house was added to the National Historic Register of Places on August 22, 1979.
The Winslow Homer Studio is the historic studio and home of the artist Winslow Homer, which is located on what is now Winslow Homer Road on Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Maine. Maine architect John Calvin Stevens altered and expanded an existing carriage house to suit Homer's needs in 1884, even moving the building 100 feet for added privacy from his brother's neighboring summer home. The most dramatic element is a balcony the width of the building, from which the artist often painted in winter. The building is 44 by 53 feet and two stories high, for a total of 2,200 square feet (200 m2). Homer lived and painted in the studio from 1884 until his death there in 1910.
The Winslow Ames House is a prefabricated modular International Style house in New London, Connecticut, United States. It was designed by Robert W. McLaughlin Jr. and was built in 1933. Winslow Ames, a professor of art history at Connecticut College and the art director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, had the home built after attending the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. Constructed for $7,500, the prefabricated house is one of two surviving Motohomes produced by McLaughlin's company American Houses Inc. The modular house, comprising three rectangles and a flat roof, was constructed on a concrete slab with a welded steel framework. It was made with asbestos panels and features a core component that provides the heating and plumbing functions for the house. The other two modules feature two bedrooms and a one-car garage.
The Nathaniel Backus House is a two-story Greek Revival clapboarded house with a gable roof in Norwich, Connecticut. The house was built around 1750 by Nathaniel Backus and served as his home, it was later moved to its current location in 1952. The house originally began as a Colonial, but was greatly modified to Greek Revival around 1825, reconfiguring the central door to the left of the facade and adding two chimneys. The house is a historic house museum operated by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The Joseph Carpenter Silversmith Shop is a historic building that was built between 1772 and 1774 on the green in Norwichtown, now a section of Norwich, Connecticut. It is a 30 feet (9.1 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m) 1+1⁄2-story clapboarded building with a gambrel roof. The interior has a single brick chimney that was used for the forge, but it has been modified and adapted for modern use with modern doors, electric lighting and heat, and a disappearing overhead stairway that leads to the attic. Joseph Carpenter (1747–1804) was a successful of silversmith, clockmaker, and pewterer, and shared the building with his brother, a merchant. The shop was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 6, 1970, and was listed as a contributory property for the Norwichtown Historic District on January 17, 1973.
The Avery Homestead is a two-story Colonial-style home in Ledyard, Connecticut that was built circa 1696. Evidence suggests that the house may have begun as a single-story, one-room house and later expanded to a two-story, two-room house by 1726. The house underwent major additions and renovations by Theophilus Avery and later his grandson, Theophilus Avery. In the mid-1950s, Amos Avery began a decade-long restoration effort to return the house to its 18th-century appearance. The Avery Homestead is historically significant as a well-preserved example of an 18th-century farmhouse with fine craftsmanship. The home is also historically important because more than twelve generations of the Avery family have resided there over the course of three centuries. The Avery Homestead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
Avery House, in Griswold, Connecticut, also known as Hopeville Pond Park House, was built around 1770. The house is a 20 feet (6.1 m) by 40 feet (12 m), two-story central-chimney Colonial that was originally sheathed in clapboard and topped with a gable roof. The central chimney is on a stone base and has a built-in root cellar. Alterations in the house changed the traditional five-room first floor plan by eliminating the keeping rooms and the removal of the kitchen fireplace. It retains much of its original door frames and wrought-iron latch hardware. After the rehabilitation of the property, the Avery House became the Hopeville Park manager's residence and is a part of the Hopeville Pond State Park. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
Edward Winslow Ames Jr. was an American art historian, author, and museum director. His academic research focused on Victorian art, but he "also had a deep interest in Modernism and the art of his own period".
The Contoocook Railroad Depot is located in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, United States, in the village of Contoocook. The depot was completed in 1849 as one of the first substantial railroad passenger stations west of Concord on the Concord and Claremont Railroad. The building is one of the best preserved of a small number of gable-roofed railroad stations surviving from the first decade of rail development in New Hampshire. The station exemplifies the pioneering period of rail development in the state.
Howard T. Fisher was an American architect, city planner, and educator.
The Josephine Reifsnyder Lustron House in Stillwater, Oklahoma is a historic prefabricated home. One of several Lustron houses built in Oklahoma during the post World War II housing shortage, this house is a well-preserved two-bedroom Lustron Westchester model with a detached Lustron garage.
Walston-Bulluck House, also known as the Pender Museum, is a historic home located at Tarboro, Edgecombe County, North Carolina. It was built about 1795, and is a one-story, three-bay, frame dwelling. It has a Hall and parlor plan and two reconstructed double-shouldered brick end chimneys. The house is sheathed in weatherboard, has a gable roof, and rests on a brick pier foundation. It was moved from its original location near Conetoe to its present site in 1969, and restored by the Edgecomb County Historical Society.
The Abraham Coult House is a historic house at 1695 Hebron Avenue in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Built in about 1706 and enlarged several times, it is a well-preserved colonial residence, exhibiting changing construction methods through its alterations. Moved in the 1970s to avoid demolition and restored, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
The Glenn and Nell Kurtz Lustron Home and Garage, also known as the Westchester 02 Deluxe model and #01237, is a historic building located in Iowa Falls, Iowa, United States. Glenn Kurtz owned and operated the Cigar and News Store downtown, and became the Lustron dealer for Hardin, Hamilton, Franklin, and Grundy counties. He and his wife Nell bought this property in the Washington Heights Addition in 1944, and they had their own prefabricated Lustron house and detached garage assembled on it five years later. The single-story, two bedroom house features its original light yellow porcelain steel wall panels, brown steel shingled roof, off-white gables and trim, metal entrance doors, and windows. The matching 1½-car garage sits behind the house, and is approached by a driveway off of Michigan Avenue. The house and garage were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. There are four other Lustron houses in addition to this one that are associated with Kurtz's representation of the company in his four county area.
Joseph Everett Chandler was an American architect. He is considered a major proponent of the Colonial Revival architecture.