Connecticut’s Oldest House is Still Standing After Almost 350 Years

If you ever have the occasion to be in Guilford, Connecticut you might want to stop to see the oldest house in the Nutmeg State.

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According to CT Visit, The Henry Whitfield State Museum is the state's oldest home, it was built in 1639. Not only is it the oldest house in Connecticut but it's the oldest stone house in all of New England. Connecticut's tourism arm says:

"Its massive stone walls and chimneys, steeply pitched roof and casement windows reflect the style of post-medieval England – rare in 17th-century America."

If you're not up for the ride to Guilford (1hr, 12 mins from Danbury) you can take a virtual tour provided by the State of Connecticut. Here is some more about the house from CT.Gov:

Construction of the Henry Whitfield House began in 1639 when a group of English Puritans, including Reverend Henry Whitfield and his family, entered into an agreement with the Menunkatuck band of the Quinnipiac tribe and renamed the area Guilford. Built of local granite, the house was one of the colonial settlement’s four stone houses that functioned as defensive buildings and private homes. It is now considered to be Connecticut’s oldest house and New England’s oldest stone house. Since 1900, it has been owned and operated by the State of Connecticut as a public museum, and the site is a State Archaeological Preserve.

The house underwent many structural changes over the course of its nearly 400 years. Restored by noted architects Norman Isham and J. Frederick Kelly in the early 1900s, it is an important example of Colonial Revival restoration work and was named a National Historic Landmark based on these historic preservation projects.

The Henry Whitfield House is a physical reminder of the European settler colonialism of the 1600s, as well as the Colonial Revival era of the 1800s-1900s that celebrated and glorified European ethnocentricity and superiority. The museum is striving to confront the facts about the site’s history in order to acknowledge past injustice, recognize how that injustice manifests in society today, and work towards an equitable future for all people.