Website design By BotEap.comThe Samuel Wadsworth Russell House in Middletown, Connecticut was one of the first mansions built in the form of a Greek temple that was instrumental in launching the Greek Revival style that profoundly influenced American architecture in the mid-19th century. It was built between 1828 and 1830 by a man who became fabulously wealthy trading in China and wanted to build a monument to his success.

Website design By BotEap.comIt was the first luxury home in America executed on a grand scale using the correct proportions of the Greek temple with six Corinthian columns on the façade. Over the course of the next forty years, it would be widely replicated and spread throughout New England, the Midwest, and would come to define the antebellum South.

Website design By BotEap.comThe Samuel Wadsworth Russell House represents a major turning point in American architecture in several important ways. Never before in the United States had the single-house design been so widely publicized in the newspapers of the day and, as a result, had such an influence on residential architecture. He was also an important catalyst in the rise of the professional architect in the United States as an occupation distinct from the conventions of the time, where the master craftsman was also the designer and builder.

Website design By BotEap.comSamuel Russell was born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1789 to a colonial family with a long history of scholarly ancestry. However, he was orphaned at age 12, received no college education or inheritance, and served as an early apprentice as a clerk at a shipping company in Middletown, Connecticut, where he learned to trade. After finishing his apprenticeship, he began traveling on ships as a supercargo, which was the person employed on board a ship by the owner of the cargo carried on the ship.

Website design By BotEap.comRussell arrived in Canton in 1819 at age 29. In 1824 he was the founder of Russell & Company, specializing in fine silks, teas, porcelain, and the lucrative opium trade.

Website design By BotEap.comChina produced much of what the rest of the world wanted in terms of trade items, but most Western trade items had little market in China. Traditional Confucian values ​​did not hold merchants in high regard, and unlike other trading nations, trade with China was highly restricted and was done on the basis of recognition of the supremacy of the Chinese Imperial Throne as the Son of Heaven.

Website design By BotEap.comFor 19th century China, trade was conducted more on the basis of tribute to the throne than free trade, with only silver or gold being accepted as payment. Opium was the only trade item in which Western traders could maintain a balance of payments because the West produced little else that had a market in China.

Website design By BotEap.comBefore the Opium Wars forced China to open up its ports, Canton was one of the few ports that China allowed trade with the West in its attempts to isolate what it saw as the corrupting influence of foreign traders on the Chinese population. Although opium was illegal in China, and trafficking to China from the west was largely controlled by the British when they acquired Bengal, Russell challenged their dominance of the Far Eastern trade by smuggling Turkish opium that had been brought across the Atlantic and the Peaceful.

Website design By BotEap.comClearly, he was among the majority of foreign traders of his day who saw nothing wrong with the ethics of the opium trade, as there was only one foreign trading company in Canton at the time that refused to engage in the trade on moral grounds. . Russell & Company eventually became the largest and most profitable American trading house in China until the late 19th century.

Website design By BotEap.comWhile Russell was in China, America was finding a new aesthetic based on classical Greek elements. This is evidenced by the number of cities that were founded in the United States in the early 19th century with Greek names, and a generation of children named after heroes in Greek legends.

Website design By BotEap.comRussell commissioned Ithiel Town, who has been described as the “father of the Greek Revival”, to design his “urban villa”. When the house was built in 1828, Russell was in China and had his friend Samuel Hubbard working with his wife, Mary Cotton Osborne, supervising the construction of the house.

Website design By BotEap.comReturning from Canton in the summer of 1831, Russell first saw his new home from the deck of a sloop on the Connecticut River. Yet even before I had seen it, the house had already been widely publicized to the American public beginning with the engraving in Hinton’s “Topography of the United States” in January 1831, and later in the 1835 edition of “The beauties of modern architecture” by Minard Lafever. “.

Website design By BotEap.comWhile he was in China, his wife Mary, with whom he had two children, died. The children were in the care of Mary’s sister, Frances. When Samuel returned in 1831, he married Frances and they had a son, Samuel Wadsworth Russell, from which the house gets its middle name, as Samuel senior had none.

Website design By BotEap.comBetween 1831 and 1836, Russell bypassed the completion of his new home by furnishing it with wonderful Eastern treasures and retired from active management of Russell & Company in 1836. At the time, Russell’s estate occupied the entire block bordered by High , Court, Pearl and Washington streets. Russell planted the extensive grounds that run down to Pearl Street with formal gardens that included plants he imported from England and had brought with him from China.

Website design By BotEap.comHe reinvested his huge profits from the China trade in a series of successful American businesses, including Western banking, industrial and railway stocks which enabled him to live a very prosperous life until his death in 1862.

Website design By BotEap.comThe house was widely imitated across the country and inspired other Greek Revival houses on Middletown’s affluent High Street, said to have been called the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens. The house remained in the Russell family for five generations until it was finally deeded to Wesleyan University by Thomas Macdonough Russell, Jr. in 1937.

Website design By BotEap.comCurrently the house is a facility of the Department of Philosophy of the University and has been home to authors, poets and scholars. During the summer, it is used for special events, weddings, and reunions.

Website design By BotEap.comThe Samuel Wadsworth Russell House is frequently cited as America’s premier example of Greek Revival architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001. Located at 350 High Street Middletown, Connecticut, on the southeast corner of High and Washington streets, the Samuel Wadsworth Russell House is one of the most important historical houses.