ABOUT THE FREEMAN HOUSES
The Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses
Of the three dozen or so houses that made up this long-vanished community, only two survive on their original foundations: the homes of the Freeman sisters. Surrounded by a storage warehouse complex, a five-story brick apartment house, and expansive parking lot, the houses have somehow come through the last century and a half with relatively few modifications.
Eliza’s residence is a Greek Revival “half house,” three bays in width with a side hallway. It retains a walnut stair rail, almost Shaker-like in its severe yet elegant simplicity. Most of the major rooms contained mantelpieces of simple Grecian styling. Although a storefront was cobbled on in 1906 and a fire caused damage in the 1980s, enough survives so that a full restoration can be effected.
Mary’s house is located just to the north and is an Italianate-styled double house or duplex. It is built over a high brick “English” basement with its main entrances under a second-story piazza. The double-house design provided for rental income—Mary’s usual tenant was the pastor of Bethel Church. The interior is virtually intact with simple mantelpieces, four-panel doors with thumblatches, and tiny rooms that seem to shout of Mary’s frugal nature.
The Freeman Houses constitute a unique survival. They present an opportunity to exhibit a chapter of Connecticut’s history that has for too long been overlooked. They deserve to be restored for the edification of today’s citizens as well as that of future generations.
The Freeman Houses, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, are the only surviving homes of Bridgeport’s “Little” Liberia - a community of “free people of color” that thrived from 1823 into the 1850s. Free blacks born in Connecticut, the Caribbean and Cape Verde, runaway enslaved persons, and remnants of Indian tribes from Connecticut and New York lived and worked together.
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