title: Building at 136–138 Collins Street
text: # Building at 136–138 Collins Street
  
  136–138 Collins Street is an architecturally distinguished Second Empire house in Hartford. Built about 1870, it is a rare and well-preserved example of this style in the city. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 29, 1982.
  
  ## Description and history
  
  136–138 Collins Street is located in Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood, on the north side of Collins Street east of Sumner Street. It is a 2+1⁄2-story brick structure, with a slate mansard roof. It is set on an elevated basement, giving it a taller than typical appearance. It is three bays wide, with its entrance in the center bay, and a two-story projecting pavilion to its right. The roof line is pierced by dormers in the mansard section that have elaborately carved surrounds and round-arch windows, that in the projecting section larger than the others. The latter dormer has a bellcast shape with a peaked hood. The roof the eaves have paired brackets. Windows are set in rectangular openings, with peaked lintels and bracketed sills.
  
  The house was built about 1870. It probably had a more ornate front porch; the present one is a 20th-century replacement. The house was once owned by Isaac Frisbie, the superintendent of Hartford's poorhouse, which was located behind the house.
  
  