Wallingford CT Historic Homes: Franklin Johnson House

The Franklin Johnson House is a well-preserved two story Italianate-style building that was a very popular architectural style during the mid-19th century in Connecticut. Built in 1866 and based upon farmhouses in the Italian countryside that were very popular in paintings at the time, the house's basic architecture is a simple cube crowned by a central pointed cupola under a broadly overhanging low-pitched roof with ornate embellishments and brackets under the eaves.

Records show Franklin Johnson was active in real estate in Wallingford during the Civil War. The Franklin Johnson House was constructed of brick covered with a light coat of cement that was textured to resemble ashlar. It has a central cupola crowning the roofline, and a three-bay facade with recessed doors and windows. Fine decorative masonry defines the floorline.

A low wall of brownstone blocks runs across the front of the property line that's crowned with a cast-iron front fence. The iron balusters are shaped like lyres. A bluestone walkway leading up to the front-porch with similar arched balusters ironwork contribute greatly to the decorative effect of the facade.

Wooden tapered fluted columns give the front its distinctive Italianate style which are mounted on hexagonal pink granite pedestals. On the south side of the porch appears the construction date "A.D. 1866."

The entryway opens to a central hall with two front parlors, a dining room and a kitchen that are decorated with period furniture. The Front Room's marble fireplace mantel and its iron grate and the ornate plaster medallion on the ceiling are the 1866 originals. The stairway in the central hall takes you to the second floor that has three bedrooms, and a storage area that has become the Silver Museum.

One unusual and distinctive element of the Franklin Johnson house is the Italianate style multi-person ceramic outhouse that matches the architecture of the main house with its pointed crowning cupolas.

Franklin Johnson lived here for 20 years, until his death on February 2, 1886. After his death, the house was a residence until being converted to commercial use around 1980. Now owned by the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust, the house has undergone extensive renovations and the home is being opened to the public as the American Silver Museum.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Franklin Johnson house is located at 153 South Main Street about a third of a mile from Wallingford's downtown central intersection. Gracing a neighborhood of other historic homes of the same period like the Samuel Parsons' House across the street helps makes the Franklin Johnson house one of Wallingford, Connecticut's most important historic homes.

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