Hotchkiss-Fyler House: Victorian Torrington's Last Word
Connecticut
The Victorian mansion at one ninety-two Main Street in Torrington was commissioned in eighteen ninety-seven by Orsamus R. Fyler and completed in nineteen hundred, built by the Hotchkiss Brothers Company as a showcase of their own craftsmanship. The house combined Chateauesque and Queen Anne architectural elements with interior woodwork in mahogany, bird's-eye maple, and quarter-sawn oak.
The collection includes portraits by Ammi Phillips, a noted itinerant American portraitist. The mansion remained in the family until the last occupant, Gertrude Fyler Hotchkiss, died in the middle of the twentieth century, bequeathing the property to the Torrington Historical Society. It now operates as the Hotchkiss-Fyler House Museum, preserving the decorative arts and furnishings accumulated by four family members over half a century.
