Mid-18th century. 29, 30, 34, and 36 Thames St.
Numbers 36, 34, and 30 are modest colonial houses which are of interest because all belonged at some time (one of them, number 30, for two centuries) to the famous stone-carving Stevens family. (Another Stevens house, the early-eighteenth-century house of John Stevens, is at 9 Elm Street.) The John Stevens Shop, across the street at number 29, has been in continuous operation since 1705 (the current building dates from the late eighteenth century). The Stevenses were first masons and stone carvers, but eventually specialists in stone lettering whose work included many major architectural commissions. John Howard Benson took over from generations of Stevenses. The second and third generations of Bensons continue the craft.