Alright, look to your right. You can’t miss the Samuel Wadsworth Russell House-it’s the mansion that looks as if someone tried to order the Parthenon from a catalog but checked the “extra columns” box. Six soaring Corinthian columns prop it up, grand as a temple, topped by a chunky entablature and broad pediment that make it lord over this corner of High Street without breaking a sweat.
Now, let’s set the scene. The year is 1828. Middletown is days away from its golden age of “big houses, big deals.” Samuel Russell, the original owner, is anything but provincial-he’s halfway across the world, conducting risky business in the China trade. Not the tea import stereotype, mind you. Russell and his trading company made their millions (to the tune of about five million dollars back then-try multiplying that to hundreds of millions today) dealing in Chinese goods... and a not-so-legal sideline in Turkish and Bengal opium. By the time the Russell House stood gleaming here, Samuel himself was still in Canton, sending instructions across oceans.
With Russell off making-and ruffling-fortunes, his wife and her friend Samuel Hubbard managed the construction. They had ambitious plans and one of America’s architectural hotshots to design them: Ithiel Town, who was about as close as you’d get to a “starchitect” in 1828. His recipe? Imagine a Greek temple squashed into a Connecticut block, make it grander, then sprinkle in decorative touches borrowed from Athens-check the column tops and window frames for those floral “antemion” patterns. Even the bricks are dressed up, covered in stucco and etched to look like massive sculpted stone.
Listen, a house this dramatic needed drama inside too. The halls and parlors are huge, ideal for entertaining New England’s finest (and probably their cousins, and anyone who had an opinion on Greek architecture). If you could peek in, you’d find rooms divided by wide folding doors, marble fireplaces perched on Ionic columns, and even painted wainscoting meant to trick you into thinking you’re gazing at intricate wood paneling, not just clever brushwork.
The work didn’t stop with the main house. About 1855, they went all-in and added a two-story wing, this time designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, Town’s creative partner. Out back, the gardens once stretched nearly an entire city block, filled with boxwood from England, rare plants Russell shipped home from China, and an iron staircase swirling out to the lawns-very Downton Abbey, if Downton Abbey had international shipping.
For nearly five generations, this was the Russell family’s domain. But in 1937, the last of the Russells handed keys over to Wesleyan University. Since then, this house has hosted everything from honors students procrastinating on papers to philosophy professors arguing about Aristotle.
And through it all, the Russell House stands as the trophy of Middletown’s most ambitious days. All right-ready for St. Sebastian Church? Just go west for about three minutes, and you’ll be there.
