Stanley-Whitman House

About this property

The Stanley-Whitman House is a historic house museum at 37 High Street in Farmington, Connecticut. Built ca 1720, it is one of the oldest houses in Farmington. A well-preserved saltbox with post-medieval construction features, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and National Register of Historic Places when the registry opened in 1966. The Stanley-Whitman House is the fourth-oldest existent structure and the oldest eighteenth-century structure in modern-day Farmington. A centrally located chimney made of field and sandstone divides the house into two symmetrical halves. The original ca. 1720 house had four rooms and a third-story attic space. Family members lived, worked, and entertained in the parlor and kitchen on the ground floor and the parlor chamber and kitchen chamber on the second floor. When second owner Solomon Whitman added a lean-to onto the existing room-over-room 3-story building in the mid-eighteenth century, he expanded his family's living space and extended the roof line to create the classic saltbox silhouette for which Stanley-Whitman House is famous. The house has a framed overhang, in which the second story extends 18 inches (460 mm) over the first story. Four drop pendants, carved into the lower end of the posts, ornament the overhang; two of these are original while the other two are reproductions. Captain John Stanley (1624–1706) acquired the property where the Stanley-Whitman House would later stand sometime in the early eighteenth century. Stanley later bequeathed the property to his son Deacon John Stanley (1647–1729), then acting leader of Farmington's First Congregational Church. The younger John Stanley commissioned the construction of a "Dwelling house" on his new property between 1709 and 1719. It is likely that the younger John Stanley never inhabited the house, having soon thereafter sold the partially finished structure and six acres of land to Ebenezer Steele (1671–1722) in December 1720. When Steele died several years later, daughter Mary Steele (1706–1789) inherited the house. In 1725, 18-year-old Mary and her 25-year-old husband Thomas Smith (1699–1788?) moved in, becoming its first occupants. In addition to farming a lot along the fertile banks of the Farmington River, Smith was also a professional weaver. His account book (currently in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society Museum and Library) provides information about the types, patterns, and cost of the textiles he produced during his lifetime. While occupying the homestead, Thomas and Mary Smith had five of their eventual 12 children. In 1735, the Smiths sold the house to Reverend Samuel Whitman (1676–1751) for £160.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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