The Josiah Bronson House is a historic house on Breakneck Hill Road in Middlebury, Connecticut, built about 1738. It is one of the town's few surviving 18th-century houses, and a good example of residential architecture from that period. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.[1]
The Josiah Bronson House is located northeast of the village center of Middlebury in a rural-suburban setting on the north side of Breakneck Hill Road. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure with a gabled roof, central chimney, and clapboarded exterior. Its main façade is five bays wide with a symmetrical arrangement of windows around its main entrance. The entrance is unusually wide, with flanking sidelight windows; it was at one time sheltered by a wide portico. The house is only one room deep, suggesting that it was originally built with a lean-to section in the rear. Some time in the 19th century, the lean-to was probably removed and replaced by the present two-story kitchen. The interior retains a significant amount of original woodwork, as altered about 1800 to add some Federal details. To the rear of the house there are two barns of 19th-century or earlier construction.[2]
The house was probably built about 1738 by Josiah Bronson, whose family was among the first to settle the Breakneck Hill area.[2] The French Army commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette[3] is known to have camped in the area during the American Revolutionary War in 1781 and 1782.[2]