Hillside

The block north of the Green along Grove and Prospect Street was laid out in 1853 by members of the Scovill family, founders of one of the city’s leading brass mills, and their son-in-law Frederick Kingsbury.  They converted orchards and farmland into spacious estates.

 

"During their engagement she and my father [Frederick Kingsbury] used often to walk up Prospect Hill, through a red gate into a meadow half way up, from which they had a lovely view of the sunset. All this land, stretching up and back from the Scovill and Merriman places on the opposite corners of Prospect and West Main Streets, was then open country. My father and mother, in the course of their walks, conceived the idea of building a house there, half way up the hill. My mother's father liked the idea too, and he built the house for them to go into when they were married."
~ Alice E. Kingsbury's memoirs, In Old Waterbury, published in 1942

 

By 1868, streets were added north of Grove Street, including Pine Street and Hillside Avenue.  Occupied by pin makers, bookkeepers and clockmakers, the houses along these streets reflect the increasing prosperity of the city’s industries.  By 1885, additional streets were opened in the area.  Frederick Rice, an officer in a local lumber company, began to build houses that he sold on the installment plan to physicians, travel agents and a butcher.  Artists, architects and builders moved to the neighborhood.

 

"When my aunt lived in the house with the staff, the chauffeur lived on Cooke Street.... There were two maids who lived in the house and a gardener who lived on North Main Street and a laundress who lived in Beacon Falls and came in on the trolley two or three days a week. "
~ Orton P. Camp, Jr. describing Hilda Camp's home on Woodlawn Terrace

 

Near the top of the hill, mansions were built for some of the city’s leading industrialists: the Benedicts, Chases, Fultons, Kelloggs, Camps, Sperrys, Whites, Haydens, and Gosses.  Prominent out-of-town architects, Henry Austin, the Palliser Brothers, and Murphy and Dana designed homes in the area, and the Olmsted firm designed landscaping.  Some of the estates included farms on the grounds, ornamental gardens and greenhouses that produced exotic fruits. In the middle of the 20th century, one of the estates was converted to serve as the Waterbury branch of the University of Connecticut; the campus will see new life as the school for Torah Umsorah in 2005.

 

"The Chase house [Rose Hill], which was adjacent to our house on Grove Street, had this incredible garden in the back... it had a fountain, it had walkways.... I can remember the elegance of that house... it was in immaculate condition and beautiful...."
~ Peter Davis Coe