Built to rival Twain's house next door, the Katharine Seymour Day House at 77 Forest Street holds its corner of Nook Farm in Hartford. Built in 1884 for Franklin Chamberlin and designed by Francis H. Kimball, this two-and-a-half-story stone house was meant to compete stylistically with the adjacent Mark Twain House. Its multicolored combination of brownstone and limestone gives the exterior a lively, textural quality, and it is celebrated as a fine local example of Queen Anne Victorian architecture.
Look up at the busy arrangement of projecting gables, dormers, and porches that break the roofline and cast shifting shadows across the façades. Inside, the house is known for high quality woodwork, plasterwork, and tile — craftsmanship that follows through from the exterior’s confident composition. Today the Day House serves as the administrative center and library for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, and its historic significance was recognized when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Notice the southwest corner of Farmington Avenue and Forest Street in Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood, where the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House keep close company.