June 17, 2022

 Connecticut River Valley Doorways

We are busy putting the finishing touches on our “Hidden in Plain Sight” tour of beautiful and historic South Windsor, scheduled for August 28th, and the Windsor Historical Society is holding their Windsor House Tour tomorrow, June 18.  This Musing takes a look at the iconic Connecticut River Valley Doorway, which patrons will be able to see on each of theses tours.  The poster image of "Doorways on Old Main Street"  used in this Musing is still available for purchase from the South Windsor Historical Society.

 Connecticut River Valley Doorway (1720-1770)

In the mid-eighteenth century, up and down the Connecticut River Valley, there was a distinctive type of doorway that joiners were making for their clients, the style of which eventually became know as the Connecticut River Valley Doorway. These doorways can be grouped into four basic types, scroll pedimented doorways, triangular pedimented doorways, segmental pedimented doorways and flat-top doorways. Intricately-carved pilasters and pilaster caps, and detailed rosettes are characteristic of the artistically expressive, architectural carving found on the doorways.

 Poster image of Connecticut River Valley Doorway.

These oversized and detailed doorways were a way for wealthy colonists to project their social status, and were based on English designs found on stately homes back in England.

Joiners, or millworkers as they are know today, may have based their design on images they would have seen in a widely-circulated architecture book by William Salmon, Palladio Londinensis: or The London Art of Building (1734). The local Connecticut artisans, who were building Connecticut River Valley Doorways before the American Revolution, made their own alterations and modifications and ended up creating a unique and recognizable style all their own.

Connecticut River Valley doorways "bear little resemblance….to doorways of the same period found one hundred miles to the east in coastal Massachusetts and Rhode Island towns..”
-Amelia Miller

Bissell Tavern Connecticut River Valley door, (no longer in existence)
Black and white photograph of the Aaron Bissell Tavern doorway,
an example of a Connecticut River Valley doorway.
photograph circa 1890-1900, Hildred Raymond Photo Collection
Object ID number R1993.24.266 

Because of demolition, fire, and the general rot, and deterioration of wood, there are only  a few hundred of these doorways remaining today. Even fewer are still associated with their original buildings. Most of these are found in towns that are located in close proximity to the Connecticut River, on both the east and west side of the river such as Windsor and South Windsor.

Built in 1757, the Ebenezer Grant house, (still standing at 1653 Main Street)
is known for its Connecticut River Valley doorway

Some of those doorways, not attached to their original structures, are now housed in major museums. In 1912, the Metropolitian Museum of Art bought an ornate doorway, circa. 1750, from the Daniel Fowler house in Westfield, Mass., and shortly after, in 1916, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston bought the front door of the Lieut. Elihu White house, built around 1762, in Hatfield, Massachusetts.

Image of the cover of Amelia Miller's book,
Connecticut River Valley doorways: An eighteenth-century flowering.

Amelia Miller's illustrated checklist of 220 river valley doorways, "Connecticut River Valley Doorways, An Eighteenth-Century Flowering," provides detailed information on the history and unique characteristics of the Connecticut River Valley Doorways, as well as information on the joiners who crafted them.  Her checklist identifies doorways that are pictured in photographs and artwork that are no longer in existence, or cannot be located, right along with those that survive, both on and off of their original structures.

 Image of the poster Doorways of Old Main Street offered for sale
by the South Windsor Historical Society.

Sources used in this Musing:
(all website sources were assessed accessed June 16, 2022)

*Gordon, Jane, Passage to History, Hartford Courant, November 4, 1995.

Miller, Amelia, Connecticut River Valley doorways: An eighteenth-century flowering, Boston University for the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 1983.

*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, website.

*The Met, New York, website.

Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested.

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