Essex Library's Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series 2021 Finale

The Essex Library's architecture and design series will finish out the 2021 season with a talk by University of Hartford Associate Professor Theodore Sawruk titled “The Italianate Villa: Reconsidering the American Family “ on Friday, June 4 at 7 p.m. on Zoom. Registration is required but the event is free and open to all.

As early as 1700, the Connecticut River supported a thriving maritime and shipbuilding trade and served to maintain commercial connections between Boston, Providence, and New York City. The later addition of a rail system only served to ease and encourage travel between these industrial centers. By the 1840s, numerous wealthy families, seeking refuge from urban crowds, pollution, and summer heat, built private retreats in towns along the river. From Old Saybrook to Hartford, the area soon supported numerous examples of the fashionable Italianate style.

This innovative design was derived from the melding of traditional European aesthetics with a technical understanding of passive solar design. Drawing on lessons learned from African slaves in the southern states, the Italianate villa with its wrap-around-porch, open plan, and
roof-top cupola realized a layering of activity spaces, transitioning from public exterior to private interior, all while providing naturally ventilated accommodations.

Ted Sawruk will discuss how, with this new residential prototype, 19th-century social life evolved, and with these changes, the American nuclear family came into existence. A new interpretation of family, the conception of our leisurely bucolic, suburban lifestyle owes much of its conception
to the Italianate Villa.

For more information or to register, please see the Essex Library's website at: https://www.youressexlibrary.o...