Heritage Trail Guide

Stop #5 - Andrew Barnum Curtiss House (1892)

Next door to the Stephen French Post Office stands the enormous Andrew Barnum Curtiss House located at 27 Maple Drive, which dominates this section of Maple Drive just as it did when it was first built.  It reflects the influence exerted upon the neighborhood by the Curtiss family, first Barnum Curtiss, who operated a plaster, saw and gristmill here in the 1800s and later, his son Andrew.

Andrew Barnum Curtiss built this elaborate 6,000-square-foot, two-and-a-half-story Queen Anne-style house in 1892.  His father had died the year before, leaving Andrew in charge of the family milling business, one of nineteenth-century Monroe’s most important industries.

Mills had been operating since the mid-1700s in this section of Stepney.  They ran by water power produced from damming the Pequonnock River.  Andrew Curtiss’s father, Barnum Curtiss, arrived in Stepney in 1840 — the same year as the railroad that would make the locale so convenient for industry.  Maple Drive is part of what for much of the 1800s was known as the village of Stepney (that name later came to be applied to the community center farther north on Main Street, sometimes also known as Birdsey’s Plain or Upper Stepney).

Barnum Curtiss became a partner in Leavenworth Mills, an existing milling operation.  Leavenworth Mills today is known as lower Stepney.  Within a few years, he owned the entire firm including saw, grist, and plaster mills, and a general store.  He replaced the old buildings and equipment with modern facilities.  In 1865, Andrew Barnum Curtiss, age 20, joined his father in the family enterprise.

Andrew Barnum Curtiss built his grand new house in sight of the mills that generated his wealth.  His home was one of the finest mansions in Monroe, for which it was nicknamed “Times Square” after the famous crossroads in New York City.  Andrew Curtiss chose the nickname because he commuted to New York City via the train, which he caught at the Stepney Depot a short distance from his house.  This house was supposedly purchased from Sears-Roebuck and shipped to the Stepney Depot in pieces.

Architecturally the Andrew Barnum Curtis house is fine example of a Victorian Queen Anne style house.  The plan of the house is extremely irregular with a number of round and extending bays topped with pointed turrets or pediment gables.  Windows of a variety of shapes and sizes are used and include stained glass.  The entry is located beneath a grand wrap-around porch supported with elaborately turned columns.  The Queen Anne (1880-1810) style of architecture was immensely popular at the end of the nineteenth century.  Queen Anne-style houses are characterized by steeply pitched roofs, asymmetrical massing, complex building plans, a dominant front-facing gable, patterned shingles, cutaway bay windows, towers, and partial, full-width, or wrap-around porches.  Earlier examples frequently utilized spindle work or “Eastlake” decoration, ornamental half-timbering and patterned masonry.