Brookfield
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William Congdon House (Brookfield)
c. 1690. 1930, alteration and enlargement, Albert Harkness. 159 Post Rd. (not visible)
Around 1930 this was an unprepossessing two-and-one-half-story shingled stone-ender with a lean-to behind, which had been extended by a one-and-one-half-story wing set back from the original front chimney. Albert Harkness filled out the ell to the extent and height of the old two-and-one-half-story block. He also added a two-story gabled bay window in front of the chimney. Then, set back from the front of the first block, he created from scratch another virtually as large, with a second massive center chimney flanked by two roof dormers and a grand new door in the corner where the two masses joined. Inside, some woodwork from the original house mixes with woodwork from old demolished houses, the rest being Harkness's modernized variant on his precedents. The result is a grand late-seventeenth-century manor house as a 1930s client would have liked it to be.
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