 The house was built in 1915-16 by Albert Bissell for Arthur Perkins, owner of the Rutland Fire Clay Company, whose plant, then located just to the east, had been built out of fire resistant materials by Bissell five years earlier.Perkins' father founded the company in 1872, at first processing low-grade iron ore, but shifting to clay when the mines proved a better source of that material.Perkins took over the firm in 1898.