John and Isabella Hooker House

The Hooker House is located in Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood, near the southern end of a block bounded by Forest, Hawthorn, and South Marshall Streets. It is set back from each of these roads, and its location is obscured by apartment buildings that have been built on its former estate grounds. It is a large 2-1/2 story brick building trimmed in brownstone, with a roughly L-shaped plan. It has a gabled roof encrusted with a variety of projecting dormers and gable sections. All of these are adorned with carved vergeboard, which effectively encircles the building. Windows in these projections are Gothic lancet-style pointed arch windows.[2]

The land for the house, then farmland, was bought in 1853 by John and Isabella Hooker, and construction of the house took place afterward. It was designed in the Italian villa style popularized by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. In the 1860s it was enlarged to a plan by Octavius Jordan, a local builder also credited with construction of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. It was the first house to be built in the Nook Farm part of Hartford, where a number of similar fine country villas were built, including the Stowe house and the Mark Twain House. Originally 1-1/2 stories in height, the roof was raised in 1906 to add a stylistically sympathetic second story.[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Hartford, Connecticut