Submitted by Deborah Shapiro
(February 4, 2026) — The Middletown Garden Club will host restoration architect Alain Munkittrick on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. at the Wadsworth Mansion, 421 Wadsworth Street in Middletown. Munkittrick’s talk is entitled “The Cultural Landscape Report for the General Mansfield House: Where Do We Go From Here?” The program is free and open to the public.
The General Joseph Mansfield House, the headquarters of the Middlesex County Historical Society, was built in 1810 by merchant Robert Watkinson. By 1816, it was owned by Samuel Mather, whose daughter Louisa married Joseph Mansfield, a career Army officer who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. Joseph and Louisa occupied the home after her parents’ deaths and the family lived there for four generations. The Historical Society rescued the house from demolition by purchasing it from their great-granddaughter, Marietta Edgerton, in 1959.
In furtherance of its mission to preserve the Mansfield House and its half-acre grounds and gardens, in 2023 the Historical Society engaged Martha Lyon, Landscape Architect, to create a Cultural Landscape Report and a Master Plan to guide the Society to address short-term challenges related to the maintenance of, and access to, the property at 151 Main Street in Middletown, but also to outline an ambitious plan for the future that would allow the Society to fulfill its mission for the next 125 years.
Munkittrick, also the President of the Board of Directors of the MCHS, will present the Report and Master Plan, hoping to engage attendees in a conversation that asks the question, “Where do we go from here?”
