Hop Brook School

The Whittemores also sponsored Pope’s daughter, Theodate, in sev-
eral architectural projects. She had worked with McKim, Mead &
White on her parents’ retirement home in Farmington, Connecticut,
in 1901. Now the Hill-Stead Museum, that house was her first major
architectural undertaking, and she is properly credited with the de-
sign. It was difficult for any female to work as an architect in an age
when it was considered unlucky for a woman to be on a construction
site. However, the Whittemores, father and son, provided important
architectural commissions for Theodate and ensured that her projects
were built.

In 1906, J. H. Whittemore
secured an option on 100 acres
of land on the south side of the
green in Middlebury, land to
become the site of Westover, a
new private secondary school
for girls. Designed by Theo-
date, the school was operated
by Theodate’s close friend
Mary Hillard. Miss Hillard had
known Theodate when the
latter was a student at Miss
Porter’s school in Farmington,
and Hillard was still teaching
there when the Whittemore
daughter Gertrude enrolled in the school. Hillard came to Waterbury in 1892 as the associate prin-
cipal at St. Margaret’s School for Girls and leased the school in 1894
from Waterbury’s St. John’s Church when she began to run it as a
private venture. She quickly became close friends with the Whitte-
mores and a frequent guest in their home. J. H. Whittemore signed
the Westover construction contracts in 1907, and the school was
opened for the spring term of 1909, with Whittemore, the school’s
largest shareholder, serving as president of the board. After J. H.’s
death, Harris took his father’s place as board leader and benefactor,
sharing the school’s continuing indebtedness with A. A. Pope until
the latter’s death, in 1913.

Source: Hidden In Plain Sight

In 1914, Harris commissioned Theodate to design a school that he
would build and give to the town of Naugatuck. She had just opened
an architectural office in New York and was thrilled with his offer,
writing to him, “You have no idea how this will help my little office
to stand more firmly on its feet…[and] its help to my reputation as
an architect.” Theodate estimated that the project would cost about
$63,000, but it came in at $106,000. Harris gave the new Hop Brook
School to the town of Naugatuck in 1916, along with a playground
that was so highly admired for the recreational opportunities it
provided city children that it prompted the local Chamber of Com-
merce to build three more playgrounds in town and led to Harris’s
agreeing to serve as a director of the Playground Association of America.

His support of Theodate’s goals was important to her architectural
work and to other significant projects in her life. Harris was the
executor of her father’s estate and later of her mother’s. Theodate
named Harris the sole trustee of her fund for Psychical Research in
1917 and named him as one of four trustees—and the only non-fam-
ily member—of the Pope-Brooks Foundation in 1918. Furthermore, he remained a close advisor as she struggled to establish Avon Old
Farms School. (“He was one of the truest friends I ever had,” she
recalled in 1938 after seeing a vision of him in a séance. Although
she had declined his youthful marriage proposal, he remained a loyal
and wise ally, championing her projects—both architectural and
educational—for the rest of his life.)

Source: Hidden In Plain Sight

On a trip to Europe in 1888, Harris Whittemore asked for Theodate Pope’s hand in marriage. She declined but they remained friends. Self-taught and one of the country’s first female architects, Theodate would design her parents’ home, Hill-Stead, in Farmington and The Westover School in Middlebury.

In 1914 Harris Whittemore asked Theodate to design the new Union City School (later renamed Hop Brook) for the children of foreign laborers in the Union City section of Naugatuck. The school was unique with its separate kindergarten cottage, fireplaces and a playful “ABC” motif that was repeated throughout the building. Hop Brook welcomed its first class on September 6th, 1916.

  • Naugatuck Daily News - Wed, Apr 11, 1973

  • Naugatuck Daily News - Mon, Aug 23, 1948