Whale Oil Row

Four nearly identical Greek Revival mansions standing side by side at 105–119 Huntington Street, built in the 1830s when New London was one of America's busiest whaling ports. The uniformity is striking — four grand columned facades in a row, projecting the prosperity of the merchants who had the money to build them in matching style.

The houses are privately owned and not open to visitors, but the streetscape they create is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival residential architecture in New England. Walk up Huntington Street from the waterfront and the row appears at the top of the hill, still elegant after nearly two centuries.

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A story
These four Greek Revival mansions were built in the 1830s by whaling merchants at the height of New London's prosperity as a whaling port. The identical facades — four houses in a row, each with a grand columned portico — signalled the extraordinary wealth that whale oil brought to the city. New London was the third-largest whaling port in the United States at the time, sending ships to the Pacific and Arctic for years at a stretch.

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