Bridgeport Ct Historic Homes: Bishop Cottage Development District

The William D

The William D. Bishop Cottage Development Historic District - also known as Cottage Park Historic District - is Bridgeport, Connecticut's first real estate tract development that was an innovative approach that raised the level of tasteful housing for lower-income workers in the early 1880s.

William Darius Bishop was a prominent figure in the history of Bridgeport. He was a Fairfax Country Congressman, and served as president of both the Naugatuck and the York and New Haven Railroads.

Bishop was also keenly interested in real estate development. His South End properties where in an area of Bridgeport where land prices were still relatively inexpensive and were ideal for low income housing being close to both factories and Seaside Park.

The design of the houses are almost certainly the work of the Palliser Brothers, a Bridgeport architectural firm that elevated the style of workingmen's architecture to a higher level in the late Victorian era. The architectural firm of Palliser and Palliser had one of widest ranging impacts nationwide of any firm in the city's history as evidenced by their national clientele and their numerous pattern books that were used across the United States. They had achieved considerable success with similar projects in the mid-1870s working with the great promoter P.T. Barnum.

The earliest inhabitants of the Bishop Cottage Development were Irish, German and rural New England workers who composed much of Bridgeport's work force at the time. The real estate development's location adjacent to Seaside Park was important to families who couldn't afford a horse and carriage to get out of town but could still enjoy easy access to open spaces on the Long Island Sound.

The 2-1/2-block residential district in the South End of Bridgeport is located 4 blocks south of the Connecticut Turnpike and Downtown and a half-block north of the entrance to Seaside Park. It is a neighborhood of 35 small wood cottages built in a 1-1/2 story Carpenter's Gothic style architecture with L-shaped foundations and front and side-gabled roofs. They were built over two seasons in the spring of 1880 and the summer of 1881.

The 1880 cottages are found on both sides of Atlantic Street. The cottage at the southwest corner of Atlantic and Main Streets appears to have been the development's "flagship" house and has a square tower with a pyramided roof rising from the recesses between its front and side projections. The corner houses at both Broad and Main Streets have octagonal front bays, in contrast to the flat single-window fronts of the houses in between, and squared dining room bays on the sides facing the street.

The cottages have clapboarded walls with decorative board-and-batten pediments in the gables, extending slightly more than half-way down the length of the gable windows. Most of the houses have a side entry porch with a roof that slopes to the front which is supported by a single square post ornamented by rounded brackets.

Today the neighborhood is a mixed residential and university neighborhood by the sea. The William D. Bishop Cottage Development Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 making it one of Bridgeport, Connecticut's most important neighborhoods of historic homes.

by: Steven Penny

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