1500 Miles from Hartford to Tulsa

The large Tudor Revival stucco house at the intersection of Asylum Avenue and Scarborough Street in Hartford was designed in 1914 by the young Hartford architect, William T. Marchant. The house was built for John B. Hart, the Treasurer and General Manager of the National Safety Appliance Company.

Marchant was still working for the architectural firm of Edward T. Hapgood when he drew the plans for the Hart house. After Hapgood died in 1915 and Marchant went into business on his own, one of his early projects was an exact copy of the Hart house. It was not uncommon for architects to use similar designs for different houses, and Marchant must have been especially proud of the striking design of the Hart house, with wings protruding at oblique angles and a roof with an interesting “thatch” effect. Perhaps his client, the Tulsa businessman John S. Garvie, also admired the Hart house on its commanding corner lot across from Elizabeth Park. Garvie had family in the Hartford area and could have seen the house on a visit to Hartford. The plans for the Garvie house are dated 1917, and it was presumably erected about that date in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fifteen hundred miles from its twin “sister” house on Asylum Avenue in Hartford. Marchant designed hundreds of homes for sites in Hartford and West Hartford, but only one house, the Garvie house, for a location in Oklahoma.

The plans for both houses are in the collection of The Connecticut Historical Society may be viewed in the new CHS online museum catalog at http://emuseum.chs.org:8080/emuseum/. The digitization and cataloging of plans for houses in Hartford’s historic West End is being funded by a grant from the West End Civic Association. The project is ongoing and will continue through the end of 2011, with additional plans being added all the time. The original drawings may be viewed in the CHS Research Center at One Elizabeth Street, Hartford. The Research Center is open Tuesday through Friday from 12-5 and Saturdays from 9-5. For more information, contact Nancy_Finlay@chs.org.