71 Riverside Rd., Newtown, Connecticut. County/parish: Fairfield.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places June 21, 2007. NRIS 07000557.
2 contributing buildings. 2 contributing structures.Also known as:
The Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, also known as James Thurber House, is a historic house at 71 Riverside Road in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, Connecticut. It is a Georgian style house built in c.1780 that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
The house is a large, rural Georgian style farmhouse built for a prosperous farmer named Thomas Sanford (1732-1814), one of the first settlers in the Newtown area. The family farm was sold in 1824 to Hezekiah Curtis (1796-1866).
The house was purchased in 1931 by Althea Thurber, the first wife of author and humorist James Thurber (1894–1961), and it was used as a weekend or holiday home. It was ostensibly a place where Althea could have dogs, and the family dogs inspired and appeared in Thurber's humorous sketches in The New Yorker magazine.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132354053