Phelps-Hatheway house and how it grew

SALISBURY — The history of the Phelps-Hatheway House in Suffield provides a look at pre- and post-Revolutionary New England. Lynn Mervosh, from Connecticut Landmarks, explained how politics and culture combined to influence the house to an audience at Town Hall on Saturday, March 19, the talk was part of the Era of Elegance lecture series sponsored by the Scoville Memorial Library and the Salisbury Association Historical Society.

The house is on 8 acres on Main Street in Suffield (the original parcel was 87 acres).

She said the house is “really a collection of three attached spaces,” each built at different periods and for different reasons.

The residence was privately owned until 1956.

Connecticut Landmarks acquired it and spent the decade between 1962 and 1972 on restoration.

The house has been open to the public since 1972.

Shem Burbank, a merchant, built the original house in 1761.

Mervosh said Burbank had, among other things, a wife, nine children and sketchy politics.

“What was his position?” regarding the conflict between the British Empire and the American colonies.

“We’ve settled on ‘fence-sitter.’”

Whatever Burbank’s private opinions, he was thought by his contemporaries to be a Tory (loyal to the British). Perhaps the fact that he sold British goods contributed to the perception.

In any event, Burbank lost his business during the war.

In 1788, Burbank sold the house to Oliver Phelps, a politically connected entrepreneur and self-made man who had been the commissary for George Washington.

Phelps’s 1794 addition, designed by Asher Benjamin,  shows the beginnings of what came to be known as the Federal style.

Mervosh said for guided tours, the practice is to start in the original house and keep the doors to the Phelps addition closed until it is time to go in.

“That’s for the ‘wow’ effect.”

The contrast between the two is remarkable — from Colonial thrift to the ornate and busy style in the Phelps addition — especially the wallpaper, which echoes the period’s enthusiasm for “the ideals of the Roman Republic.”

The wallpaper was hand-stamped, in five or six colors, and had a chalky texture.

Phelps’s luck eventually ran out, too, and he lost the home in 1807, moving to Canandaigua, N.Y. (his home there is now a bed and breakfast).

A third addition was built, and the last owner, a Mrs. Fuller, died in 1956.

Lou Bucceri pointed out the similarities between the Phelps-Hatheway house and the Holley-Williams house in Lakeville — both originally built in the Colonial period, with later additions, and both with owners whose politics proved out of step with popular sentiment.