The Samuel Wadsworth Russell House in Middletown, Connecticut was one of the first mansions built in the form of a Greek temple that was instrumental in launching the Greek Revival style that profoundly influenced American architecture in the mid-19th century. It was built between 1828 and 1830 by a man who became fabulously wealthy in the Chinese trade and wanted to build a monument to his success.
It was the first luxury home in America executed on a large scale using the correct proportions of the Greek temple with six Corinthian columns on the facade. Over the course of the next forty years, it would be widely replicated and spread throughout New England, the Midwest, and come to define the prewar South.
The Samuel Wadsworth Russell House represents a major turning point in American architecture in several important ways. Never before in the United States had the single-home design been so widely advertised in the magazines of the time and, as a result, had so much influence on residential architecture. It was also an important catalyst in the emergence of the professional architect in America as an occupation distinct from the conventions of the day when the master craftsman was also the designer and the builder.
Samuel Russell was born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1789 to a colonial family with a long history of learned ancestry. However, he was orphaned at age 12, received no college education or inheritance, and served as an early apprentice as an employee at a shipping company in Middletown, Connecticut, where he learned to trade. After completing his apprenticeship he began to travel on ships as a supercargo who was the person employed on board a ship by the owner of the cargo that was transported on the ship.
Russell came to Canton in 1819 at the age of 29. In 1824 he was the founder of Russell & Company, specializing in fine silks, teas, porcelain, and the profitable opium trade.
China produced much of what the rest of the world wanted in terms of commercial items, but most Western commercial items had little market in China. Traditional Confucian values did not hold merchants in high regard and, unlike other trading nations, trade with China was highly restricted and conducted on the basis of recognition of the supremacy of the Chinese Imperial Throne as the Son of Heaven.
For 19th century China, trade was conducted more on the basis of tribute to the throne than free trade, and only silver or gold was accepted. Opium was the only commodity in which Western merchants could maintain a balance of payments because the West produced little more than had a market in China.
Before the Opium Wars forced China to open its ports, Canton was one of the few ports that China allowed to trade with the West in its attempts to isolate what it felt was the corrupting influence of foreign merchants on the Chinese population. . Although opium was illegal in China, and the traffic to China from the west controlled largely by the British when they acquired Bengal, Russell challenged his dominance of the Far East trade by smuggling Turkish opium that had been brought across the Atlantic and Pacific. .
It was clearly in most foreign traders of his day that they saw nothing wrong with the ethics of the opium trade, as there was only one foreign trade company in Canton at the time that refused to engage in the trade on moral grounds. . Russell & Company eventually became the largest and most profitable American trading house in China until the late 19th century.
While Russell was in China, America found a new aesthetic based on classical Greek elements. This is evidenced by the number of cities that were founded in America in the early 19th century with Greek names and a generation of children named after heroes in Greek legends.
Russell commissioned Ithiel Town, who was described as the "Father of Greek revival" to design your "Urban Villa." When the house was built in 1828, Russell was in China and had his friend Samuel Hubbard work with his wife, Mary Cotton Osborne, overseeing the construction of the house.
Upon his return from Canton in the summer of 1831, Russell first saw his new home from the deck of a sloop on the Connecticut River. However, even before he saw it, the house had already become widely known to the American public through its engraving on Hinton’s work. "United States Topography" in January 1831, and later in the 1835 edition of Minard Lafever’s "The beauties of modern architecture".
While in China, his wife Mary, with whom he had two children, died. The children were in the care of Mary’s sister, Frances. When Samuel returned in 1831, he married Frances and they had a son, Samuel Wadsworth Russell, from whom the house receives its middle name, since Samuel Sr. had none.
Between 1831 and 1836 Russell oversaw the completion of his new home by furnishing it with wonderful eastern treasures and retired from active management of Russell & Company in 1836. At the time, Russell’s estate occupied the entire block bordered by High, Court, Pearl and Washington streets. Russell planted the sprawling grounds that ran down to Pearl Street with formal gardens that included plants he had imported from England and brought from China.
He reinvested his huge profits from the China trade into a number of successful American businesses, including banking, industrial, and Western railroad stocks, which allowed him to live a very prosperous life until his death in 1862.
The house was widely imitated across the country and inspired other Greek Revival houses on Middletown’s wealthy High Street, which Charles Dickens is said to have called America’s most beautiful street. The house remained in the hands of the Russell family for five generations until Thomas Macdonough Russell, Jr. finally transferred it to Wesleyan University in 1937.
Today the house is a facility of the University’s Department of Philosophy and has been home to authors, poets, and scholars. During the summer, it is used for special events, weddings and meetings.
The Samuel Wadsworth Russell House is frequently cited as the premier example of Greek Revival architecture in America. In 1970 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001. Located at 350 High Street Middletown, Connecticut at the southeast corner of High and Washington streets, The Samuel Wadsworth Russell House is one of the most important historic homes.
