Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses

The Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses are historic residences at 352-4 and 358-60 Main Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The simple, clapboard-covered dwellings were built in 1848 in what became known as Little Liberia, a neighborhood settled by free blacks starting in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. As the last surviving houses of this neighborhood on their original foundations, these were added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 22, 1999. The houses are the oldest remaining houses in Connecticut built by free blacks, before the state completed its gradual abolition of slavery in 1848. The homes and nearby Walter's Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church are also listed sites on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.
The Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses are transitional late-Greek Revival/early-Victorian houses typical of their time and place. They are wood-frame structures built atop high masonry basements, necessitated by their location in a low-elevation shorefront environment. Mary's house, the northernmost, was erected first, begun in April 1848 and completed by the following September. It is of Italianate vernacular design. It is a double house, four bays in width, with opposite side entrances, and two stories in height over a full English basement. It is surmounted by a pair of low-pitched hip roofs, and there is a veranda across the facade. The interior has undergone very little remodeling from its time of construction, and retains original doors, mantels, and window and door casings. There are indications that it was originally constructed as a single-family house, and that that portion to the south was a subsequent addition. Eliza's house was built beginning in September 1848, and completed over the fall and winter months. It is a Greek Revival half-house, three bays wide with a side entrance and side-gable roof. An attic dormer in the Victorian Gothic style was added circa 1862. A storefront was extended out from the facade in 1903 that was removed in the summer of 2013. The interior was scorched by fire in the late 1980s; however, enough original fabric survives so that a complete restoration is feasible.

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