In 1788, Oliver Phelps purchased a traditional center-chimney house in Suffield, CT from Shem Burbank, who built the center-chimney structure in 1761 where he and his wife Anna Fitch Burbank raised nine children. A budding land speculator in the tumultuous years after the American Revolution, Phelps commissioned the addition of a large wing that may have served to entertain potential clients. The wing featured five splendid Parisian Louis XVI wallpapers by Jacquemart et Bernard with wood blocks made by Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and presumed to have been printed between 1791-95. The wallpaper, found in the north wing, covers two wide halls, a sitting room, dining room, and two second floor bedrooms.
From the stylish new rooms, Phelps peddled a vision of American expansion to New Englanders looking for a new life in the west. Phelps’ attempts to sell significant amounts of Seneca Nation land as part of Connecticut’s Western Reserve proved unsuccessful. Within a decade, Oliver Phelps’ fortunes had collapsed, but the wallpaper endured. Today, it is one of the oldest, largest extant wallpaper collections in the United States contained within one of the most complete collections of late 18th-century woodworking and interior decoration.
Four rooms at the home in Suffield currently contain the original wallpaper. When highway construction threatened the house, one room was dismantled and reconstructed at the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, where it is still on view today as the Federal Parlor.