Elisha Williams House
The Elisha Williams House , also known as Hawthorne House is known, is a residential building at the Aitkin Avenue in the east of Hudson , New York in the United States. The brick building was built in the Federal Style around 1810 and is different from other houses in Hudson built in this style. Some Victorian style decorative elements were added later.
Williams, the original builder of the house, was a lawyer and politician who became known nationwide as a gifted public speaker . The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 .
building
The house stands on a gently sloping parcel that is 27 meters wide and 36 meters long, two houses north of Green Street ( New York State Route 23B ) on the east side of the street. The building is rectangular. It has two and a half floors and spans five yokes . It is made of bricks in the American composite and sits on a stone foundation . The house is at a slight angle to the property so that the front facade faces more west than the other houses along the street.
The gable roof with shingles covered in wood. Two chimneys sit south of the roof ridge at both ends of the gable, two dormer windows covered with gable roofs with verge rise on the northern half of the roof. A closed cornice forms the eaves .
The windows have brick lintels and thin stone sills. The area around the main entrance is made of wood, the door is lined with two simple pilasters . A cornerstone of limestone on the southwest corner bears the inscription "Hawthorne". A two-story kitchen wing protrudes from the east side of the building.
Inside, the floor plan is aligned with the central hall, the main rooms are on both sides of it. The original floor plan has not been changed, and some of the interior fittings, such as the staircase with the cherry wood stair post and the fireplace area in the salon, are original. There are some more modern additions on the second floor, such as the bathrooms. The cellar has not been expanded.
aesthetics
The Elisha Williams House isn't the only federal-style house in Hudson, but its significance differs from the others, most of which are located on the opposite end of town near the Hudson River . At Williams' house, the English bond was applied to the entire building, while the front of the other houses were bricked in the Flemish bond. It also lacks the sidelights and elliptical skylight that usually frame the main entrance to a house in this style.
These deviations could reflect the different regional origins of the builders of the house. The other federal-style houses were built by descendants of the city's founders, mostly whalers who came to Hudson from the coastal areas of Massachusetts and Rhode Island . Williams, on the other hand, was born in inland Connecticut .
history
Born in 1773 in Pomfret , Connecticut, Williams was orphaned and taken into the care of a family friend. He learned law under a judge in Litchfield and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1793 when he moved to the hamlet of Spencertown in what is now the Town of Austerlitz .
He was a persuasive spokesman, and his reputation as a lawyer quickly spread both inside and outside New York. After marrying his guardian's daughter in 1795 , William moved to Hudson in 1799. Two years later he was first elected to the New York State Assembly , which he served for nine terms for the Federalist Party .
While it is likely that Williams had the house built, the exact timing is unclear. A city map from 1801 does not show it, but at that time the property was outside the city limits, so it was perhaps left out for this reason. A map from 1816, apparently copied from the earlier map, shows a brick building at the site. However, it is believed that Williams bought the house or had it built around 1810. At that time the front faced the Union Turnpike, now New York State Route 66 .
Williams' legal and political career continued to be positive, despite the fact that the Federalist Party was in general decline after the war of 1812 . At the New York Constituent Assembly in 1821, Williams clearly opposed extending the franchise to include men without wealth, but failed to get his way. He stayed in office until the late 1820s, but began to focus on other projects, such as establishing the town of Waterloo in Seneca County near the Finger Lakes . After he left office, his health deteriorated. He spent a lot of time in Waterloo, although he was still registered as a Hudson resident. In 1832, a year before his death, Williams sold his property to local farmer Richard Atwell.
Atwell sold part of the property in 1835 but continued to live in the house. It later became known as Hawthorne House, due to the inscription on the corner stone, the origin of which is unclear. There's a Hawthorne Valley near Spencertown and it could be that Williams brought the stone with him when he moved west. Atwell's son-in-law Richard Aitkin owned the house until 1856. The road that was built next to the house in 1913 bears his name.
credentials
- ↑ a b c d e Peter Shaver: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Elisha Williams House ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . Archived from the original on June 4, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
Coordinates: 42 ° 14 ′ 49 ″ N , 73 ° 46 ′ 17 ″ W.