Date: Fri 04-Jul-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

house-garden-tour-Far-Away

Full Text:

Six Landmark Homes In Sandy Hook On House & Garden Tour

(with photos)

The Newtown Historical Society's third annual Historic House and Garden Tour

will be Saturday, July 12, from 11 am to 5 pm. Six landmark homes and gardens

in the Sandy Hook section of town will be open.

Knowledgeable guides will be at each location to provide historical

perspective and information.

Tickets, $20 per person, are available by calling 426-5937, or by writing

Historic House Tour, PO Box 189, Newtown 06470. Tickets are limited and must

be ordered in advance. They may be picked up between 10:30 and 11:30 am on the

day of the tour at the historical society's Matthew Curtiss House, 44 Main

Street.

Proceeds of the tour will be used for the restoration and renovation of the

Middle Gate schoolhouse, which was built about 1850 and is located on the

grounds of Middle Gate School. The schoolhouse is owned and maintained by the

Historical Society.

Featured on the tour will be the Eighteenth Century saltbox on Bradley Lane

known as Far Away Acres. The property is the former home of Grace Moore,

soprano of the opera and concert stage and star of radio and motion pictures

before she was killed in a plane crash in Denmark in 1947. The original part

of the house is believed to have been built about 1740 and for some years

housed a general store.

Ms Moore bought the house, its furnishings, and 347 acres of land in 1937 from

George F. Waldo, publisher of The Bridgeport Post , and constructed a huge

addition to hold a cathedral-ceiling music room. The house contains five

working fireplaces and five staircases and was the site of filming for Adam's

Rib, an early 1940s movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. The

house is now owned by Timothy and Elin Hayes, who have spent the past three

years restoring it.

The homestead of Benjamin Curtis at 211 Walnut Tree Hill Road was built about

1748. Benjamin and his brother Matthew came to Newtown from Stratford in 1716.

Strong and able, between them they sired some 13 generations of Curtises; most

local properties have a Curtis in their chain of title. Here can be found one

of the largest fireplaces in Newtown, 96 by 60 inches, with a bake oven

reaching almost four feet into the masonry. With moldings, panelling and a

corner cupboard in the dining room, the house has an elegance unusual in old

Newtown houses. The property once was part of a 300-acre farm known as the

first irrigated farm in the state.

The house was owned by only two families until antiques dealer Lincoln

Mitchell and his wife, Mary, purchased it in the late 1950s. Mary Mitchell

later married antiques dealer Ken Hammitt and they sold antiques from the

house before moving to Woodbury. The current owners, Wilbur and Elizabeth

Fiske, said the Mitchells put in the house's first plumbing and central

heating systems during a careful restoration.

The home of Robert and Kathryn Mathison on Riverside Road is an expanded

Nineteenth Century farmhouse which also was once part of a large working farm

owned by Benjamin G. Curtis, a descendant of the Curtis brothers. For many

years the house was owned by one of Mr Curtis's sons, Newton Curtis, who

served in the General Assembly during the 1920s and 1930s. It housed laborers

who picked in the farm's apple and peach orchards while the Curtis family

lived in the adjacent "main house."

After her husband's death, Mrs Curtis moved out of the main house - later

owned by illustrator James Thurber - and into the house which had been used by

the farm laborers. The houses shared a spring-fed well until the two neighbors

had a falling out, and Mr Thurber was forced to dig his own artesian well, Mrs

Mathison said.

"I grew up on Riverside Road and remember Mrs Curtis sitting on her front

porch swing looking at the sunset," Mrs Mathison said. "She was in her 90s

when she died and afterwards the house sat empty for a long time. Eventually

my mother bought it, then we bought it from her 26 years ago."

Looking in the attic after she moved in, Kathryn Mathison found an old trunk

and an antique music stand. Throughout the house were volumes of a set of

"romance" fiction published in 1893-94. Tucked among the pages were about a

dozen old deeds and wills which are now displayed, along with old photographs,

in a shadow-box table in the family room.

Believed to have been built in the late 1700s to early 1800s, 28 Gelding Hill

road is a red salt box with a central chimney piercing the side-gabled roof.

Town records trace the property, which was a farm, back to 1800 when it was

owned by Amos Shelton. The house did not have electricity or running water

until 1973. Two additions and a screened porch were constructed over the

years. The property is now owned by Gerry and Linda Panuczak.

An 1820 farmhouse at 30 Zoar Road, owned by Knettie and Phillip Archerd, also

is on the tour. A major addition, designed by an architect to blend with the

original house, was added in 1995. The property includes a barn and a large

pond. For many years the house was owned by three unmarried Chambers sisters -

Elizabeth, Jennie and Jane - who lived until their 90s. In 1768 Asa Chambers

began buying real estate in the Zoar area and several of the houses there,

including the house across the street at 31 Zoar Road, are known as Chambers

homesteads.

The elaborate gardens of Dr Donald Evans at 14 Osborne Hill Road also will be

on the tour. The property includes about 20 acres with topiaries, Japanese

gardens, waterfalls, exotic birds and other attractions.

The tour will be held rain or shine.