PUTNAM COTTAGE

Putnam Cottage is a two-story structure having “the plan of a two-room, central chimney house with rear lean-to and east wing” and is located at 243 East Putnam Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

Historically known as “Knapp (or Knapp’s) Tavern but more commonly as “Putnam/Put’s Cottage”, the building is thought to have been built in the first quarter of the 1700s when ‘Horseneck’ (a 17th and 18th century name for the Town of Greenwich) was gaining a stronger identity as its own community. Over the course of its first 50+ years, the building originally began as a one-room structure, then expanded to its current form of a three-bay wide, two-story house with a central chimney.

 

Presently, the Israel Putnam House Association (I.P.H.A.) owns and maintains the cottage and property for the use and benefit of the Putnam Hill Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Putnam Cottage is open to the public as a historical museum and a learning center for area students, as well as a setting for Revolutionary War celebrations. 

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Architectural Significance

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Putnam Cottage is significant as a restored example of early regional Connecticut architecture which has a connection with the Revolutionary War. According to the structure’s application for placement on the National Register of Historic Places, “shingle siding was typical on early Connecticut houses only in the areas around Milford and Stratford, and this house is unusual in that it retains some of its 18th century shingles with semi-circular butts.” The nomination further states that the building has had successive enlargements and remodeling that have resulted in the removal of late 19th century features, reconstruction of 18th century-style fabric that now shows a simple mid-18th century Connecticut frame dwelling with a Federal-period stone wing.

 

​The name of the structure, “Putnam Cottage” and its variations, needs explanation. Architectural historian William Lamson Warren stated that calling the building a “cottage” is misleading (stating, “It is not a cottage!”). However, the added word “cottage” was used for the purpose of marketing summer rentals during the latter half of the 19th century in Greenwich with the American artist John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) being its most well-known renter (1899).