| Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House | |
| Location: | 71 Riverside Rd., Newtown, Connecticut |
| Coordinates: | 41.4253°N -73.2636°W |
| Built: | c.1800 |
| Architecture: | Georgian |
| Added: | June 21, 2007 |
| Refnum: | 07000557 |
The Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, also known as James Thurber House, is a historic house at 71 Riverside Road in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, Connecticut. It is a Georgian style house built in c.1780 that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
The house is a large, rural Georgian style farmhouse built for a prosperous farmer named Thomas Sanford (1732-1814), one of the first settlers in the Newtown area. The family farm was sold in 1824 to Hezekiah Curtis (1796-1866).
The house was purchased in 1931 by Althea Thurber, the first wife of author and humorist James Thurber (1894–1961), and it was used as a weekend or holiday home. It was ostensibly a place where Althea could have dogs, and the family dogs inspired and appeared in Thurber's humorous sketches in The New Yorker magazine.[1]