Connecticut

Theodate Pope designed Westover School for her friend, teacher, and mentor from boarding school, Mary Hillard, who became headmistress until her death in 1932. John Howard Whittemore of nearby Naugatuck, Connecticut, a business partner of Pope’s father, provided initial funding to secure the 25-acre site, after which 3,000 investors bought shares of stock in the Westover School Corporation at $100 each to underwrite construction. The project was large in scale but simple in plan. The four-sided building encloses a courtyard.

Hill-Stead is a Colonial Revival country estate that houses a major collection of French Impressionist art and is embedded in a landscape that includes ample gardens as well what was originally a working farm. Designed by Theodate Pope (a name she retained professionally following her marriage in 1916 to John Wallace Riddle) with the support of McKim, Mead and White, the white clapboard-sided house features a two-story portico loosely modeled on that of Mount Vernon.

Situated on a waterfront site in the rolling hills of southeastern Connecticut and within two hours drive of twenty million gambling-age adults, the Mohegan Tribal Nation’s Mohegan Sun is one of the largest casinos in the world, and second only in the region to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s Foxwoods in nearby Ledyard, Connecticut. Both casinos’ explosive growth are a result of their location halfway between the major population centers of the Northeast megalopolis: Boston and New York.

Seaside Sanatorium exemplifies the connection between medical models of treatment and architecture. Perhaps the first facility designed in the United States for the heliotropic treatment of tuberculosis in children, this late work by famed architect Cass Gilbert was designed for one purpose: to treat this dreaded disease by the near continuous exposure to sunlight—a function expressed in its location, spatial organization, and plan.

General Houses' building, now known as the Steel House, is a small one-story residence that is now used as offices. It sits on a concrete slab foundation, to which are bolted structural wall panels of 14-gauge steel, four feet wide by nine feet high. These flanged panels, bolted to each other and to similar ceiling panels, are structural members as well as walls. Prefabricated wood double-hung windows and wood doors are inserted into pre-engineered spaces in the panels. Wiring and insulation are inserted into the "pans" formed by the flanges.

The Winslow Ames House, designed by Robert McLaughlin, Jr., and built by his company, American Houses, Inc., is a two-level home with an integrated garage. It sits on a concrete block foundation and has a crawl space. Wall panels of asbestos-cement and insulating board are bolted to a welded steel frame. Open web steel joists support floors and roofs.

Eolia Mansion exemplifies the development of Connecticut’s high society at the turn of the twentieth century. The Renaissance Revival building, located on Goshen Point with a view of Long Island Sound, was the home of Edward S. and Mary Stillman Harkness. Set at the southern end of a 230-acre site with one-mile of coastline, the estate consisted of the mansion and sixty-one support buildings. The house was named Eolia after Aeolus, the ruler of the winds in Greek mythology—especially appropriate for the notably windy site.