The Lost Barnabas Deane House (1780-1926)

A mansion built for Revolutionary War diplomat Silas Deane, who never lived in it

The story below is about the lost Barnabas Deane House in Hartford. I have also made a YouTube version of this story, but for those who prefer a text version you can read it here. [As a special bonus, I have also made a video on YouTube that is available to my channel members in which I read an article from 1926 by a woman who lamented the planned demolition of the house and gives a little background history].

The Barnabas Deane House in the late 1800s (Source: Connecticut Museum of Culture and History).

A house once stood on Grove Street in Hartford that was a great example of Federal-style architecture. Kown as the Barnabas Deane House, it was originally intended to be the home of his brother, Silas Deane, who has been escribed as America’s first diplomat. Born in Ledyard, CT in 1737, he attended Yale and later read law, but eventually settled in Wethersfield, Conn, where he married a wealthy widow, Mehitable Webb, and became a successful merchant in the West Indies trade. In Wethersfield, he erected a large mansion house, which survives today. Completed by 1770, it reveals Deane’s taste for grand architecture. It’s brownstone steps likely once led to a covered piazza in front that has since been lost (today we only have a picture of a later porch) and instead of the typical center-hall arrangement of the time, an off-center front door leads to a side stair-hall with an elaborately carved balustrade. Deane entertained lavishly in the house’s stylish parlors, where elaborate meals were prepared by an enslaved cook. We can be grateful that his Wethersfield is preserved as part of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

A supporter of the American Revolution, Silas Deane was appointed to the first Continental Congress in 1774 and the following year he was sent to Europe on a mission by a secret committee of the Congress to secure supplies from the French. Deane was eventually joined by Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee of Virginia as the three commissioners who finally signed a treaty of alliance with the French in 1778. According to tradition, while he was in France, Silas sent his brother Barnabas plans for a new house he wanted built for himself in Hartford. A substantial gambrel-roofed building, it would have high-style Palladian decorative features, including ornamental pilasters, a semi-circular window above the front door, and dentil moldings along its rooftop cornice and central triangular pediment. The interior parlors featured fine paneling and intricately carved mantelpieces.

The Zenas Cowles House, called Oldgate, which is on Main Street in Farmington, was also built by William Spratts, who erected the Barnabas Deane House.

While Deane may have sent plans from France, or even brought building materials back with him from Europe, much of the house’s design can be attributed to its architect-builder, William Spratts. Originally from Scotland, Spratts was serving in the Royal Artillery with General Burgoyne’s British army that surrendered after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. Spratts became a prisoner of war in the Hartford area and, after his release in 1780, was hired by Barnabas Deane to build the house in Hartford. Spratts then moved to a project in nearby Farmington, where he was hired in about 1782 to greatly expand an earlier house on Main Street, the Zenas Cowles House, known as Old Gate. According to local lore, Spratts employed Hessian soldiers, who had been his fellow POWs, as carpenters. Like the Deane House, Old Gate also has a gambrel roof and similar exterior decorative work, but the Farmington house is even more elaborate, with a beautiful tripartite Palladian window above the front entrance. Spratts ended up staying in America after the war. He moved to Litchfield, CT, where in the early 1790s he designed similar Georgian or Federal-style houses, such as the Julius Deming House, the Elisha Sheldon House across the street, and a house for Deming’s brother-in-law, Epaphroditus Champion in East Haddam, CT. Spratts later moved to Vermont, where he died in 1810.

Getting back to the Deane House in Hartford: sadly, this substantial residence, once one of the grandest in the city, was never occupied by Silas Deane, in fact he never set foot in it. Instead, it became the home of his brother Barnabas Deane, who was also a wealthy merchant. Silas fell victim to the political factionalism of the era. After the treaty signing, he was recalled to Philadelphia to account for government funds which his enemies thought he had misused for his own purposes. Kept in limbo for a year by a hostile Continental Congress, Deane eventually returned to Europe in 1780, where he experienced financial reverses and declining health. He ended up in England, where he lived on the charity of friends. In 1789, he finally borrowed money for a return trip to America, but after boarding ship, he became violently ill and died just before the ship left port. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the port town of Deal.

The Barnabas Deane House during the period it was used by the Open Hearth, photographed shortly before it was torn down in 1926 (Source: Connecticut Museum of Culture and History).

After his brother Barnabas, another merchant named Daniel Buck owned the Hartford house, and in the later 19^th century it was the residence of Nelson Hollister, a prominent businessman, who died in 1897. The side bay window was probably added at this time. From 1902, the house utilized by the Open Hearth, an organization dedicated to helping homeless men. The house once sat along Grover Street, with its side facing the street. It’s front façade faced east, towards the Connecticut River, a gateway to merchants’ trade with the West Indies at the time the house was built. The Barnabas Deane House was torn down in 1926 to make way for a parking lot for the nearby Hartford Club. A few decades later, the area around it was thoroughly cleared of old buildings and the area has since been completely transformed with modern construction.