11th Annual Tour Returns July 9—

An Opportunity To Look Into Some Of

Newtown’s Historic Homes And Gardens

By Shannon Hicks

Newtown Historical Society will present its 11th Annual Historic Homes & Gardens Tour on Saturday, July 9.

In tipping its hat to the series of events being presented by groups and businesses all year to celebrate Newtown’s Tercentennial, the historical society has added a few extra features to this year’s tour. In addition to having a number of privately owned homes and gardens on the tour, there will be a champagne reception on Friday, July 8, at which time Town Historian Dan Cruson will offer his lecture “Newtown’s Painted Ladies: Victorian Architecture in a Small New England Town.”

For a few hours on Saturday, Mary Mitchell will be at the antique barn behind the home of Shane and George Miller, where she will be signing copies of Touring Newtown’s Past: The Settlement and Architecture of an Old Connecticut Town. That book, which Mrs Mitchell co-authored with her dear friend, the late Al Goodrich, has gone into a second printing. Four of the properties on the tour this year are featured in Touring Newtown’s Past.

Visitors will be invited to sip some cold lemonade and chat with Mrs Mitchell about her books and Mr and Mrs Miller about their barn.

In the town’s Hanover district, Mae and Bob Schmidle will not only have their circa 1710 home on the tour, they will also be hosting a special presentation of “A Flag For Newtown: Tercentennial Folk Art Flag Show.” The collection of folk art-style paintings, antique paintings, new sculpture and an original silk flag had been on view during June at C.H. Booth Library.

The self-guided homes and gardens tour this year will offer ticket-holders access to four private homes and gardens, three additional private gardens, one public garden, and the aforementioned antique barn at the Miller home.

The tour will run from 11 am to 5 pm and will happen rain or shine.

Tickets for the tour are $25 and include Friday’s lecture by Mr Cruson along with the tour on Saturday. Tickets are on sale now at C.H. Booth Library (25 Main Street) and The Little Green Barn (4 Washington Avenue). Tickets that have not been sold by the day of the tour will be available at Matthew Curtiss House (44 Main Street), but only between the hours of 10 am until noon, or until they sell out.

Additional information is available by leaving a message at 426-5937 or visiting www.NewtownHistory.org.

Proceeds from the sale of homes and gardens tour tickets benefit Newtown Historical Society, the upkeep of Matthew Curtiss House (the society’s headquarters) and the society’s educational programs. Additionally, all proceeds from the sale of Mrs Mitchell and Mr Goodrich’s book have always and will continue to benefit the historical society.

Docents will be positioned at each stop on the self-guided tour. They will greet visitors as they reach each stop of the tour and offer information about each home and/garden.

Homes And Gardens

There will be four locations with homes and gardens open; the Schmidles will also have their house open for visits.

Peggy Jepsen Gross has been living for a few years at 16 South Main Street; earlier this year the property also became home to one of the town’s newest businesses, Ram Pasture Antiques.

Mrs Gross will welcome visitors into her late 18th Century two-story farmhouse, which rests above the eastern shore of Hawley Pond, and the antique barn that is now home to Ram Pasture Antiques.

The house has a gabled roof, center entrance, and two chimneys placed at either end of its ridge. Mrs Gross believes the one-story shed-roofed addition was constructed during the mid-1800s.

The house rests on a fieldstone foundation. A History Study of 1989 notes the building had a center chimney removed and the house underwent substantial alterations.

Situated between the house and pond is the barn where Mrs Gross has set up her antiques shop. The 1989 study referred to in the previous paragraph also reports that an Italianate window located at the north gable of the two-story barn came from St James Episcopal Church when it was located at the corner of Grey’s Plain Road and Route 34. The church building was sold after the Civil War, and then demolished.

The property is shown on maps dating from 1709 to 1758 as belonging to Dr Lemuel Thomas, who was Newtown’s first surgeon.

At 1 Orchard Hill Road is the home of Marilyn and Tucker Frey. Theirs is a stunning pre-Revolutionary War property considered to have been part of the first Newtown settlement.

The Freys’ home is a Colonial dwelling with a central chimney piercing its side gable roof. It has five working fireplaces; the large fireplace in the living room (previously the Keeping Room) is original. Mr Frey believes the brick of that fireplace was made locally.

The front door has a simple frame, as do its windows. The windows are 6 over 6 sash on the façade and 12 over 8 sash on the north elevation, with a 4 over 4 sash under the gable.

A one-story gable-roofed addition with a chimney above is at the south elevation running diagonally to the southwest.

Previous owners Vern and Albert Knapp added what is now the kitchen and first floor guest room during the 1940s. According to Mr Frey, the current kitchen was originally an outbuilding on the property. He thinks the building was originally a barn that had been moved to the original house for additional space.

This is another house featured in Touring Newtown’s Past. Nathaniel Nichols, who built the house circa 1731, was the town’s first commercial baker. On the first floor was the family’s cooking fireplace, but because the house was set into a hillside, a second fireplace with several beehive or baking ovens was able to be constructed in the cellar. Customers would drive up to the rear cellar entrance, without entering the house.

The original entrance to the house was in the back of the house, not the current front. Most likely there had been a road or driveway coming onto the property from Orchard Hill, which would have put the entrance to the home and bakery in the back of the house.

Nathaniel’s son Peter went into wool carding. He became so prominent that the property became known as Peter’s Pitch. He was a captain in the Revolutionary War, and became Grand Master of Newtown’s first Masonic Lodge on January 19, 1791.

Mr Frey is a Woodbury-based antiques dealer. He specializes in 18th and 19th Century antiques — Queen Anne and Chippendale forms — and many examples are found in his home. The house also features a number of Housatonic Valley handcrafted pieces from the 1700s including many that originated in Newtown. A secretary in the house is an 18th Century Newtown piece.

Richard and Nora Murphy, who live at 159 Poverty Hollow Road, will also have their home and gardens open on July 9.

Their home is a 1½-story circa 1767 Colonial. It was owned at one point by Lemuel Hawley, who was a grandson of Benjamin Hawley, the first Hawley to settle the northeast corner of Newtown. This is noted in Touring Newtown’s Past, as is the notation of “eyebrow or ‘lie-on-your-stomach’ windows under the front eve.”

According to Jo-Ann Scebold, who visited the property with Town Historian Dan Cruson, names on old maps also associated the property to the Godfrey (1867) and C.J. Beck (1905) families.

“There are three large [maple] trees in the front of the house, opposite the front door,” Mrs Scebold said. “Rick Murphy told Dan Cruson and me they were planted by the original owner and each tree represented a child born in this house.”

First floor additions are architecturally interesting and lend to outstanding use of space. While the Murphys enjoy open hearth cooking, they also take pride in their beautifully handcrafted modern kitchen, which flows with the décor of their charming home.

“This house is interesting because the integrity of the original house remains,” said Mrs Scebold. “The rooms have not been altered. Instead the house with its additions almost tells the story of how it became larger [additions] over the years. You can still see where the original exterior walls exist.”

In Sandy Hook, Deb and Mike Osborne will welcome visitors into their home and gardens at 25 Zoar Road. The Osbornes live in a storybook pre-Revolutionary War (built 1734) cottage that is surrounded by 14 still very rural acres.

In Touring Newtown’s Past readers learn that many additions including dormers have been made to the house and that at one time its adjacent pastures and woods were part of the neighboring estate, Appleberry Farm. That property is still owned and lived on by Mr Osborne’s mother, Betty Lou Osborne.

The home integrates undated accents of modern living with a picturesque milieu of pond, willow tree, foot bride, moon gate, several perennial gardens and a Zen garden. A series of additions includes a greenhouse with a hot tub.

The 20th Century kitchen emphasizes modern living with comfortable casual style.

“The kitchen was renovated in the 1990s,” said tour coordinator Jo-Ann Scebold. “I believe Deb said that originally the kitchen area of the house had been a woodshed. Debby said the kitchen as we see it now was three different rooms that were incorporated into today’s kitchen.”

Mae and Bob Schmidle, who have resided at 53 Echo Valley Road since 1964, will once again open their home for visits.

The house was officially named The John Glover Schmidle House and placed on The National Register in December 2001. The wood-shingled house, originally one story, was built in 1708 by the man who was to serve as Newtown’s first town clerk and as the town’s deputy to the General Assembly.

Coming up the Housatonic River from Stratford, John Glover drove his stake down about a half-mile west of what is now Lake Lillinonah and hacked out a clearing in a wilderness where the only paths were Indian trails. One of the few settlers who was able to read and write, he quickly became an energetic and effective force in the community and one of its largest landholders.

In town records, Mr Glover was named as one of the purchasers, along with Abraham Kimberly, “for ye proprietors of Newtown” when the land that became Newtown was purchased.

By 1712 Mr Glover was serving as one of the town’s first town clerks (he is considered by many to have been the first official town clerk) and was an “extensive” land owner. He was also, in November 1713, elected during a town meeting to the committee to hire workmen, on the town’s account, “to build a meeting house to serve God in.”

 

The Gardens

Literally up the hill from the home of Mr and Mrs Schmidle, at 65 Echo Valley Road, is the home of Sydney Eddison, a master gardener who remains very approachable even with a still-growing résumé filled with published books, lectures, and teaching engagements.

Mrs Eddison is a lady who appreciates all four seasons. She has written about and celebrated gardens throughout the seasons in her seven books. Her latest, Gardens To Go: Creating and Designing A Container Garden, was published in April.

The March 2005 issue of Martha Stewart Living featured Mrs Eddison and her gardens’ daylilies, which she called “endearing to the beginning gardener … They’re delightfully stalwart and unfussy.”

Mrs Eddison has a way, in fact, of making most aspects of gardening seem easy to anyone regardless of their skills in the out of doors. The Gardener’s Palette: Creating Color in the Garden, released in 2002, used Mrs Eddison’s training as an artist to offer an introduction to the color wheel and basic color theory.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Lessons from a Country Garden (March 1997) and The Self-Taught Gardener are found in the libraries of any smart gardener who enjoys reading about the lessons of someone who has gone through the same trials and errors they probably have, while The Unsung Season (Gardens & Gardeners in Winter) helped readers see that it is possible to find beauty even in the starkest of months.

The gardens that encircle the home of Maureen McLachlan, another master gardener who knows how to celebrate gardening year-round, will also make a wonderful first impression.

Ms McLachlan designed and installed the gardens that catch the attention of most visitors to the home where she and her husband Richard live in at 32 The Boulevard.

Mrs McLachlan may have graduated the certified master gardener course at University of Connecticut and done design work at the Botanical Gardens, but it has been the hands-on work that has been most valuable.

“Of all the books I’ve read and all the courses I’ve taken, it’s working the yard the makes the difference between knowing how to garden and effectively applying that talent,” she told The Newtown Bee when her gardens were last opened to the public, five years ago.

She has been creating landscaping to complement her home for the last seven years. That hard work was celebrated in April when Gardening & Deck Design, a special publication from Women’s Day magazines, included a two-page feature on Mrs McLachlan and her gardens, giving attention to the variation of structure plants, great for winter interest, and its undulating design of perennials.

Among other special features, Mrs McLachlan has also installed Memory Gardens, each with a sentimental name of a friend or family member.

The gardens have also been noticed by Sydney Eddison, who included them in her book The Self-Taught Gardener.

A Williamsburg-style period garden adds charm to the home of Betsy Kenyon, who lives at 62 Main Street within Newtown’s Historic District of the Borough of Newtown. The formal garden was designed by neighbor and master gardener Brid Craddock.

Ambience, formal style, low maintenance, and deer-proof plants make the Kenyon garden a definite must-see.

While the Kenyons’ circa 1785 house is not included in the tour this year, a few interesting facts (gleaned from Touring Newtown’s Past) about it are worth mentioning.

The house is a gable-roofed five-bay Colonial with a series of additions to the rear. From outside visitors can notice the 12 over 12 windows under the roof peak and an uncharacteristically arched attic window.

Paul S. Smith, publisher of The Newtown Bee from 1934 until 1973 (who may have retired but certainly remained active at the newspaper until his death in 1990), was born in that house.

An Antique Barn

Visitors are in for a treat when they visit the picturesque barn that is part of the charm of 50 Main Street.

The house on this property is a town landmark also known as The Budd House and/or The Glover House, named for former owners. The Budd House was the first residential listing for Newtown on the National Register of Historic Places. The house, built in 1869 for Henry Beers Glover, was first called The Glover House.

Today the house and its barn are owned by Shane and George Miller. It will be in the Millers’ barn that local treasure Mary Mitchell will be situated, where readers of any of her books will be welcome to visit her for a few hours.

The barn and carriage house, which sit behind the house, were restored in the 1970s by Mark Oppenheimer. The barn underwent more restoration in the 1990s

 True to Newtown’s love of all things equestrian, documents from 1929 indicate the homestead was known as The Roadside Farm, where competitive jumping horses were stabled. Its simplicity is highlighted by white bead board walls and original stable layout.

The Pleasance

In 1997, The Newtown Bee, under the supervision of owner R. Scudder Smith, developed a parcel of land in the center of town, which entailed the razing of an eyesore of a building, Lovell’s Garage, and the creation of a beautiful park.

The name “Pleasance” was dug out of a dictionary by Bee Managing Editor Curtiss Clark. The word is defined as “a place laid out as a pleasure garden or promenade,” or “a secluded garden or landscaped area, a source of pleasure.” The name certainly fits the vision of Mr Smith and was adopted for the site.

A three-tiered antique Fiske fountain and gazebo now provide a pleasant place for people to relax, while a monumental rooster — the symbol of Newtown — that was found in an antiques shop in Kent was added to the park in 2001.

The park has also expanded in recent years, when the area on the west side of the property sprouted a new wooden flagpole, stone paths, and a few pleasant places to sit. A meandering stone path leads to three benches with great views of the rest of The Pleasance. Initial plantings included rhododendrons, holly bushes, and a bed of annuals and perennials.

The latest addition to The Pleasance is a collection of sculptures by the Vermont artist Stephen Huneck. The Dog Walker is accompanied by five dogs including a pair of golden retrievers and a chocolate lab that have more than a passing resemblance to the dogs who spend most of their time at The Bee office on Church Hill Road.

In addition to small groups, families and friends who meet there for a lunch or dinner, countless wedding photographs have been taken at the park since its creation just six years ago.

The library is hosting its outdoor summer concert series there for the second season this year, and high school students from Newtown and beyond have made it a central destination for prom night photos.

In August it will be the site of a bocce and croquet tournament, another first for 1 Main Street.