79 Trumbull Street/100 Whitney Avenue, on the Northwest corner of Trumbull Street and Whitney Avenue is an imposing structure even today. It anchors the street corner with its presence, in a scale similar to Berzelius society across the street, as well as other residential buildings that surround it on its North and West faces. Its use has changed over the more than 100 years since it was built, but its structure has remained relatively unchanged.



Site



The site of the structure originally belonged to land owned by Russel H. Chittenden, who was the owner of a large tract of land along Whitney and Trumbull avenues. According to the legal record of the site, a significant portion of the land was then transferred to the DeForest family and Thomas H. Russell before the 1880s. No legal documentation of this transfer was kept, however, it is referred to in later discussion of the land, and the land appears divided in the 1888 lithograph of the town. Over the period 1886-1889, Charles S. Thomas Russell acquired the land belonging to the DeForest Family, as well as an additional small tract from Chittenden, to form the land that the structure sits on today. Because of the cobbling together of land from various sources, the site bears two addresses, which it has kept since 1889: 79 Trumbull Street and 100 Whitney Avenue. It is likely that the house was built by Russell in the period 1889-1892, at which point he transferred ownership to his wife, who owned the structure into the 20th century.



Architecture



The structure itself is three story main house above a half-level basement. It was constructed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, and is one of the few surviving Richardsonian Romanesque structures in New Haven. The style, popularized at the end of the 19th century by Henry Hobson Richardson, the architect who designed the Trinity Church in Boston, is characterized by a picturesque and solid-appearing construction. It is brick with brownstone highlights around arches, windows, and between levels. Typical of its style is the prominent peaked and gabled roof, with round and polygonal turrets piercing it at irregular intervals. It has a prominent chimney on its Whitney Ave. face, which adds to the appearance of height as well as visually offsetting a large round turret on its southwest corner.



Moving down from the roof, the windows of the house are straight-topped, with heavy brownstone window dressing and lintels, which add to the weighty sense of the structure. The windows themselves are irregularly and asymmetrically placed in many instances, characteristic of the picturesque quality of the style, and obscuring the interior layout of the house, as windows are of varying heights and are scattered over the outside wall at irregular intervals.



The south face of the house on to Trumbull street houses its main entrance, with a large, rounded, recessed arch framing the it, and a two-flight staircase approaching the front door, which does not face the street, but is rather set into the left side of the arch. A second, smaller entrance exists on Whitney Ave. near the north end of the house. There is also a separate basement entrance on Whitney, directly below the back door entrance. The base of the structure is faced in stone, and there are small ground-level windows that give light to the basement.



The overall appearance of the house is an irregular mix of curved and angular forms, which combine to create a structure that speaks of permanence and massiveness. As a three-storey single family home, the structure would have been a very impressive status symbol, and would have stood out from the surrounding houses both because of its darker brick-and-stone construction and for it asymmetricality.



Use



The structure was build c. 1890 as a single-family home. In an interesting legal arrangement, it was sold by Thomas H. Russell, through a middle man, to Mary K. Russell for $1. After this transfer of ownership, the building did not change hands until 1928, when Yale University bought it from Mary K. Russell. The University sold the property to Louis M. Cantor of New Hampshire in 1945, who in turn sold it in 1958 to Adam J. Sasorski. Sasorski converted the home into mixed-use apartment housing and office space, an arrangement that has persisted to this day.



Sasorski, in 1965, sold the property to its last recorded owners, Rhoda Pesty and Donald Cole, investors from outside the New Haven area who have subsequently renovated the structure to bring it up to code for use as a commercial/residential property, including fire escapes and insulation. Today its first two floors and basement serve as office space for eight psychologists, occupational therapists, and mental health counselors. Its third floor is divided into three apartments. The interior space does not retain a home-like feel, but rather evokes a dark, closed warren of offices with little common space.



Though today the structure does not retain its former glory as the extravagant home of a wealthy New Haven resident, it remains an important and imposing presence in its neighborhood. Its mixed-used character proves that as a structure, it can adapt to new city circumstances, while at the same time its exterior visual character has remained relatively unchanged since the late 19th century.