Rye House is a historic summer estate property at 122-132 Old Mount Tom Road in
Litchfield, Connecticut
Litchfield is a town in and former county seat of Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,192 at the 2020 census. The boroughs of Bantam and Litchfield are located within the town. There are also three unincorpora ...
. Developed in 1910 for a wealthy
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
widow, it is a prominent local example of Tudor Revival architecture, and a major example of the trend of country estate development in the region. The property was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
in 2000.
Description and history
Rye House is located in Litchfield's
Bantam borough, at the northwest corner of Old Mount Tom Road and Old Forge Hollow Road. The estate includes the main house, a gardener's cottage, landscaped gardens surrounding the house, and other amenities. The main house is a large -story stone structure, built out of stone that has been stuccoed except for rustic corner quoining. To the west of the house is a formally landscaped garden area, and a lawn extends south toward Old Mount Tom Road, where the property is fringed by trees.
[ The house contains 18 rooms totaling 10,127 square feet.][ and ]
The estate was developed on what was previously farmland by Isabella Douglass Curtis, the widow of a wealthy New York City banker who died in 1895. She named the property in memory of her previous estate in Rye, New York
Rye is a coastal suburb of New York City in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the Town of Rye, which has more land area than the city. The City of Rye, formerly the Village of Rye, was part of the Town until it r ...
. The house was designed by architect Wilson Eyre
Wilson Eyre, Jr. (October 30, 1858 – October 23, 1944) was an American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area. He is known for his deliberately informal and welcoming country houses, and for being an innovator in ...
, and was completed in 1910; the gardener's cottage was designed by Wilder and White and was built the following year. The property was prominently marketed by Eyre as a showcase, appearing in a writeup in ''American Architect'' in 1911, and meeting most of the conditions laid out in his 1908 article "The Planning of Country Houses". Curtis lived here year-round with her son until the 1930s, when financial reverses forced her to sell it.[
Recent owners have included actress and model Karen Kopins Shaw, who was ]Miss Connecticut
The Miss Connecticut competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Connecticut in the Miss America pageant. Connecticut has won the Miss America crown once (Marian Bergeron, 1933), and is the only New England st ...
1977, and Anderson Cooper and his partner, Benjamin Maisani, who were reported to have bought it in 2014.
See also
*
References
{{National Register of Historic Places
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut
Tudor Revival architecture in Connecticut
Houses completed in 1910
Houses in Litchfield County, Connecticut
Litchfield, Connecticut
National Register of Historic Places in Litchfield County, Connecticut
Anderson Cooper
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut