Wallingford House (True Temper Inn)

Wallingford House represents the evolved form of a hostelry that has marked the village's principal intersection since 1824. Facing the Bennington to Burlington stagecoach road (Main Street) and the road to East Wallingford (School Street), the L-shaped building contained tavern, stores, and barber and cabinet shops. It echoed a contemporary two-story business block to the south, rebuilt as the present Odd Fellows Block in 1875 by Clinton G. Smith. Two stories of porches faced each road. In 1892 W. D. Hulett turned it into the New Wallingford, an enlarged inn catering to the increasing number of summer tourists who arrived by train to spend the season in a healthful rural setting. He added a third floor under a high hipped roof, Queen Anne porches, a five-story tower at its southwest corner, and lower wings that enclosed an inner courtyard. In 1926 the American Fork and Hoe Company of Cleveland, Ohio, acquired the inn. Owner of Wallingford's pitchfork works, the company was intent on diversifying from True Temper Tools into sporting goods (by 1930 the former pitchfork factory would be producing golf clubs). Recognizing the tourist potential of the community, American Fork and Hoe developed summer camps on the company-owned Elfin Lake west of the village, turned the Old Stone Shop (RU78) into a tearoom, and had company architect Charles B. Rowley of Cleveland rebuild the inn in a Colonial Revival mode. Rowley removed the tower and added gabled dormers, wood shingling, small-muntined sash, and porches on two-story-high square posts centered on each major facade. Renamed the True Temper Inn, it operated as a hotel until 1968 and has recently been renovated for elderly housing.