Coventry Poor Farm-Town Asylum
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Joseph Briggs Farmhouse (Coventry Poor Farm-Town Asylum)
c. 1790. 195 Town Farm Rd.
This two-and-one-half-story dwelling has a typical five-bay format and, for a farmhouse, an unusually fine fanlighted and pedimented doorway flanked by fluted pilasters. The addition to the rear undoubtedly provided more room for the poor and mentally ill who worked the farm while the property served as the town poor farm and asylum, from sometime after 1853 until the late 1930s. It is now a residence, and its crop is a subdivision of sizable Neo-Colonial houses of the late 1970s that aspire to its dignity.
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