Oriented gable-to-street, this Queen Anne house features a two-bay facade with a small, open, single-story, shed-roof porch with turned columns. The first story is sided with clapboards while the second story features decoratively cut wood shingles. The pedimented gable end displays fish-scale shingles. There is a wood-frame garage in the rear of the house. John Dicken Horsfall (1864 - 1938) purchased this lot from John S. Parsons, who lived in a house just east of the property. Parsons, a carpenter and builder, may have constructed the house for Horsfall. Horsfall worked as superintendant of the Broadbent Cotton Mills in Unionville for sixty years. The Broadbent Mill produced cotton batting and yarn, and sold cotton waste. The house was sold out of the family in 1943.

Virtually unaltered since its construction, the John D. Horsfall House at 1781 Farmington Avenue is architecturally significant as a well-preserved example of Queen Anne style and historically significant for its association with Horsfall, a long-time superintendant of the Broadbent Cotton Mills in Unionville.

[1] Information retrieved from the town website http://www.farmington-ct.org/.
[2] Proposed Historic Properties, Historic District Study Report, Unionville Historic District and Properties Commission, 2010, SHPO Library, Hartford.
Assessors information and Parcel IDs retrieved from the website http://www.farmington-ct.org/landrecords/search.php.
Maps and GIS information retrieved from the website http://www.crcog.org/gissearch/Default.aspx.