Current News

College to study historic steel house on campus

The public is invited to view the "machine for living" Saturday, Nov. 10, from 2 - 4 p.m.

November 05, 2007

Connecticut College has been awarded a $7,000 Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Grant from the CT Trust for Historic Preservation to study the college´s notable steel house, purchased in 1933 by Winslow Ames, the founding director of New London´s Lyman Allyn Art Museum.

The grant, along with matching funds and in-kind services, will be used to develop a stabilization and reuse plan for the frameless steel-panel prefabricated house, as well as to analyze the building´s historic materials and prepare a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Abigail Van Slyck, the Dayton Professor of Art History, and Doug Royalty, a preservation specialist, will oversee the project.

Several prefabricated houses were displayed at the 1933 Chicago World´s Fair, where they were touted as the answer to the housing crisis of the Great Depression. Ames attended the fair and was fascinated by the steel "machine for living." Excited about the possibilities of prefabricated housing, he and his wife built the steel home, as well as another two-bedroom house assembled from panels of specially formulated asbestos cement, on two small lots on Mohegan Ave. Both were sold to Connecticut College in 1949.

The second house, now known as the Winslow Ames House, was rehabilitated in 1994 and is now used as office space by the college. The steel house, however, was used as faculty housing until 2004 and has remained largely unchanged. Recently, the house was listed on the State Register of Historic Places.

The public is invited to view the house Saturday, Nov. 10, from 2 - 4 p.m. This free event will include historic information; tours of the building´s exterior at 2:30, 3 and 3:30 p.m. and refreshments. The house is located next to the Winslow Ames House, bordering the college´s South Parking Lot.

For more information contact: Amy Martin (860) 439-2526; a.martin@conncoll.edu