Alsop House Is Connecticut’s Newest National Historic Landmark
The
Richard Alsop IV house, located at 301
High Street in Middletown, was designated a national
historic landmark in January. It was built between 1838-1840 by Richard Alsop
IV, son of the poet and “Hartford Wit,” Richard Alsop III. The younger Alsop, a
native of Middletown, was a successful merchant
and banker who lived in Philadelphia.
Originally occupied by Alsop’s widowed mother, Maria Pomeroy Alsop Dana, the
house remained in the family (although not occupied by them for a number of
years) until 1948. In that year, it was purchased by Wesleyan University
with funds given by Harriet and George W. Davison, class of 1892. The house is
now known as the Davison
Art Center.
The Alsop
house has been described as an important example of Romantic Classicism in
American architecture. Although for many years the design was believed to have
been the work of Ithiel Town or one of his protégés, it was actually the work
of the short-lived New Haven firm of Platt &
Benne, who came together under the aegis of the New Haven architect Sidney Mason Stone.
Because of an idiosyncratic compositional character blending pared-down
Greco-Roman and Regency forms and details, the house stands architecturally
apart from most other contemporary suburban villas and, to a certain extent,
defies easy categorization.
The Alsop
house’s primary importance lies in its exterior and interior wall paintings, considered
exceptional in their scope and artistic quality. Although believed to be used
on the exterior for reasons of economy in place of marble ornament, the
painting was in keeping with fashionable decorative trends of the period.
The
frescoes were created in two or more campaigns between 1839 and ca. 1860. The
artists, thought to be recent Italian and German immigrants, utilized a variety
of stylistic sources—ancient, Renaissance, and 19th-century—from
which to derive subject matter and approaches for artistic organization and
representation in devising the interior painting programs. Ultimately, the
house was embellished with colorful wall panels in the neoclassical modes
stylistically referred to as “Pompeian” or “Empire,” fanciful cage-like frames
and realistic native birds and plants, and grisaille
trompe-l’oeil statues and faux stonework.
While
there is some evidence that the Alsop house dazzled contemporary Middletown society,
neoclassical fresco painting, derived form Roman antiquity as well as the
Italian Renaissance, had become a customary mode of interior decoration for the
haut monde in major urban centers
during the first half of the 19th century. Numerous examples once
existed in cities such as New York and Philadelphia, where immigrant artists were well
established; sometime later, artists even found their way to smaller
communities like Middletown.
Inherently fragile and subject to the ravages of time, few frescoes have
survived from this period. Tastes changed, especially in the late Victorian
period, and many frescoes were painted over or covered with wallpaper.
Upon
acquisition of the house in 1948, Wesleyan
University immediately
understood the uniqueness of these paintings and over almost 60 years of
stewardship has made the preservation and understanding of their history an
ongoing concern of the institution.
The
paintings have long been known to scholars. In 1926, Edward B. Allen placed
their significance within the broader historical context of American decorative
arts, noting: “their superior execution, classical inspiration, fine rich
color, and excellent drawing and decorative quality.” Allyn Cox, a New York artist hired to conserve some of the wall
paintings in 1949, commented, “the Alsop House….has always been alone among old
New England places for its finished and
elegant mural painting, inside and out.” In 1966, art historian Samuel Green
drew attention to the significant scope of the painting, calling it “the most
elaborate program of decoration in American domestic architecture before the
Civil War.” In 1980, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York selected the painted stone walls
and other painted elements of the Alsop House stair hall for reproduction in a
new American Wing gallery. More recently, Peter Kenny, the curator of American
Decorative Arts at the Met, described the Alsop frescoes as “unique and
irreplaceable treasures [which] are truly part of our national cultural
patrimony.” The paintings’ unique survival provides a window onto a
once-flourishing decorative approach and design aesthetic that has largely
disappeared in the United
States.
