Connecticut Radio Information System

The Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden explores the ways that the upheaval of wartime can change fortunes. Around 1762, Suffield native Shem Burbank built the house where he and his wife Anna Fitch Burbank raised nine children.

Financial hardship forced Burbank to sell his house to Oliver Phelps in 1788. During the Revolution, Phelps had skillfully served as Deputy Commissary under George Washington. A budding land speculator after the War, Phelps commissioned the addition of a substantial wing decorated with imported Parisian wallpaper in 1794. The contrasts between the two sections of the house further highlight the differences between Burbank’s and Phelps’ personalities, experiences, and times.

From the stylish new rooms, Phelps peddled a vision of American expansion to New Englanders looking for a new life in the west. Phelps’ attempts to sell significant swaths of Seneca Nation land as part of Connecticut’s Western Reserve ultimately proved unsuccessful, and his fortune collapsed. The Hatheway family took possession of the house from the early 1800s to 1914, accumulating an attic full of artifacts that document life from that time. Today, the museum boasts an extensive collection of 18th-century antiques while the grounds feature a Colonial Revival Garden.

CRIS Solution

CT Landmarks owns and operates the historic Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden. The organization desired to have an accessible smartphone audio tour installed outside the home to make information about the historic home available year-round when the building is closed to the public.