The Isham-Terry House, at 211 High Street, was built in 1854 and purchased by Dr. Oliver Isham in 1896. Isham, a physician, used the building as his medical office as well as his home, where he lived with his sisters Julia and Charlotte.
I had to literally get out a calculator and double-check when I read that Julia and Charlotte continued to live in the house until the 1970s. As the city changed around them, and other buildings in the neighborhood were felled by the wrecking balls of urban renewal, the sisters altered almost nothing in their home. Connecticut Landmarks, which manages the property, describes it as "a time capsule of genteel life in turn-of-the century Hartford."
I didn't tour the inside, I simply walked over and stood out front. (I'm a lazy tourist.) What struck me about the house was not its carefully preserved Italianate exterior or even the specific details of its history, but the way it stands alone on a corner like an urban version of those abandoned buildings you encounter in the Great Plains, surrounded by miles of empty fields.
If the house had been demolished, no sign of this area's past as a residential neighborhood would remain. If its neighbors had been allowed to stand with it, it would be a local highlight, but not a particularly visible one. But as it is, the Isham-Terry House feels like the one place that seems to exist because someone wanted it to, not because someone thought it was necessary. And though part of me wanted to relocate it to a street where it might better? fit in more, another part of me loved the defiance in keeping it right where it is.