THE MARY & ELIZA FREEMAN HOUSES (CIRCA 1848)

The Mary and Eliza Freeman houses are characteristic of working-class dwellings built in Bridgeport between the coming of the Housatonic Railroad (1840) and the Civil War. Both are of wood-frame construction covered with clapboard, two stories in height over a raised brick basement, and set back from the street. They are compatible in terms of scale and cornice height.

The Mary Freeman House is of a type known locally as a “double house.” It provided a spacious owner’s apartment (north side), with a second unit of slightly more limited size (south side) for rental income. The house today is remarkable for the degree of preservation of its original fabric. This structure is constructed in the Italian villa style with opposite side entries and paired low hip roofs built over a high brick “English” basement. These main entrances are situated under a second-story piazza. This long porch provided a space for outdoor socializing and observing street life as it shaded and cooled the parlor and kitchen stories during the hot summer months.

The Eliza Freeman House, to the south, was built as a Greek revival “half house,” three bays in width with a side hallway. It is a single-family residence, with a side gable roof (the gable enclosing an oblong light) and side entrance. It retains a walnut stair rail, almost Shaker-like in its severe yet elegant simplicity. Most of the major rooms contained mantelpieces of simple Grecian styling. Although, a storefront was cobbled onto the Eliza Freeman House in 1906 by another owner, and a fire burned through the roof at the southwest corner in the 1980’s, enough survives to permit full restoration. Also, in 1906 or so, a one-story, shed roofed, rear appendage was extended to more than double its original size and raised up to a full two stories.