Feake-Ferris House

Feake-Ferris House is the oldest house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and also likely the first house constructed in Greenwich and one of the oldest in Connecticut.[1][2]

The post-and-beam house is believed to have begun with a stone cellar dug into a hill around 1640 by Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake and Lt. Robert Feake who purchased "Elizabeth's Neck" (Greenwich Point) that year[3] and the house is situated on Greenwich Cove. Around 1645 Feake constructed a one-room-over-one-room house on top of the cellar before selling the property to Jeffrey Ferris in 1653. Around 1660 Jeffrey Ferris added a lean-to to the back of the house giving the house its saltbox shape. In 1689 Ferris' son, James Ferris, constructed the final major addition, to the right side of house, leaving the house with a two-over-two form and extended lean-to, and Ferris installed new windows, one of which has survived intact and was discovered during the 2018 restoration.[4]

The age of the structure was verified by Columbia University dendrochronologists at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory[5] conducting "[a] 2015 dendrochronology analysis of the house [which] dated the west side of the existing house--the Feake House--to 1645; the north "lean-to" addition to the Feake house made by Jeffrey Ferris to 1660; and the east side and expansion of the "lean-to" - the James Ferris expansion - to 1689."[2] Historian Missy Wolf researched the land's title history dating back to Feake.[6]

In 2014 the house was nearly demolished when its early history was largely unknown, but through the efforts of local preservationists, it was restored in 2018 by the Greenwich Point Conservancy working with the owners.[2] The house is located at 181 Shore Road and is privately owned but occasionally open to the public by agreement with the Greenwich Point Conservancy.