This house was built by Robbins Battell Stoeckel in 1907, one of two houses still standing side by side on Litchfield Road designed by the architect Ehrick K. Rossiter. Robbins was the brother-in-law of Ellen Battell Stoeckel, who founded the Norfolk Musical Festival, and the son of Gustave Stoeckel, German immigrant and Professor of Music at Yale. He had been named after Ellen’s father Robbins Battell, who endowed the Yale School of Music. Robbins Battell Stoeckel called his house Huttlein, the German word for cottage. He later engaged the architect Alfredo Taylor to make alterations to this house and to design a bungalow for him on Mountain Road. The bungalow housed an organ for his wife, Katharine Fales, who was organist at the  Congregational  Church. In1982 Taylor’s large body of work in Norfolk was designated  a Thematic District in the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the nation’s historic buildings worthy of preservation.

— Text by Ann Havemeyer
— Photo courtesy of The Norfolk Historical Society