James Dunn House

Contractor Frederick Ives advertised himself as a “Builder of Artistic Homes” in Manning's Rutland City Directory, and his dwellings are representative of a process that shaped much urban house building in the early twentieth century. At the end of the First World War, Ives began offering lots and built-to-order houses in the undeveloped northwest quarter of Rutland City on two streets he named Ives and Litchfield avenues. Among the dozen Colonial Revival and bungalow houses he built here, this bungalow may have been his first commission and it closely matches a house illustrated in his directory advertisement. Typical of his work, the house is a large-scale, if basic, rectangular bungalow, based on a published design with stock windows and porch details, varied slightly to make it distinctive. Ives built the house for James Dunn of Dunn Brothers Plumbing and Heating Company, who most likely did his own plumbing and heating and subcontracted with Ives in the construction of other houses in Rutland.