Victorian Fence Posts Along North Street

Posted on July 5, 2018 by pvermily

It’s been well documented that Litchfield, as much as any other town, is a shining example of the Colonial Revival. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Litchfield residents remade their town from one that featured many Victorian homes (with a few structures remaining from the Colonial Era) to an embodiment of Colonial architecture, with many homes painted in the classic white-with-black-shutters look.

Among the most notable examples of the Colonial Revival’s impact on the town’s appearance are the redesigned court house tower and the restored Congregational Church. There are still vestiges of the earlier Victorian design, even if they are small. The North Street fence shown above features a classic Colonial look. But a closer examination of the stone slabs reveals:

… the post holes from an earlier Victorian metal fence. A similar metal fence is visible in this c.1905 post card of North Street:

Many such holes and old stone posts are visible around town, reminders of the fact that the historic Colonial appearance of Litchfield was carefully crafted over decades, more than a hundred years removed from the Colonial Era.

LHRR Series: The Last 1/10th Mile

Posted on June 11, 2016 by pvermily

Runners making the final turn from South Street to West Street experience the surge of adrenaline that comes with the wall of sound rising from the crowds along the sidewalk and the Green. The Green, the center of community activity in Litchfield, has not always been the pastoral heart of the town.

An 18th century map of Litchfield drawn by Ezra Stiles. Courtesy of Yale University.

Like many Connecticut communities, the Green began as simply a very wide road. In Litchfield, it was Meeting House Street, and was what is now East and West Streets. The western portion of this road was 264 feet wide, with the eastern portion stretching to 330 feet wide. (Colonial roads were much wider than our modern roads, in part because the lack of effective road building tools meant that large boulders and tree stumps would be left, so travelers needed ample space to get around them.) In the roadbed where Meeting House Street intersected with North and South Streets stood the Congregational Church. In 1752, the county courthouse was also built in the center of the road, and the sheep and pigs of local farms milled about.

Lyman Beecher, minister at the Litchfield Congregational Church from 1810 to 1826.

At that point the town did not have a centralized commercial district, but in the coming decades, especially during the Revolutionary War, businesses in town clustered around this intersection. An 1814 map of town shows a great deal of activity on North Street, with the courthouse having been moved to the southern side of West Street. The Congregational Church – with Lyman Beecher as minister – still stood in the intersection. This is commemorated with a monument that today is in the southern portion of the Green; there was, however, no grass there in 1814.

The Litchfield Green,. 1907.

What we would recognize as the Green began to emerge after a new Congregational Church was built outside of the intersection in 1828-29. The town decided to grade its central area to create a commons. This was divided into three sections, East, West, and Center Parks. By the time of the 1851 county centennial, this had become the major meeting place in town. The early 20th century would see transformations of the Green by Litchfield’s Village Improvement Society, but for the new sidewalks, lighting, and trees that came and went, the Green had become the heart of town, which it will be tomorrow when approximately 1,500 await the start of the 40th Litchfield Hills Road Race.

Good luck to all runners!

For more on the development of the town of Litchfield see Rachel Carley’s book Litchfield: The Making of a New England Town.

For more information on the history of the Litchfield Hills Road Race, see Lou Pellegrino’s book A History of the Litchfield Hills Road Race: In Smallness there is Beauty (now available at the Litchfield Historical Society).

The Blizzard of 1888

Posted on February 22, 2015 by pvermily

With Litchfield stuck in a weather pattern that seems to bring more snow every day, perhaps a look back at the great Blizzard of 1888 is in order.

Drifted snow at Dr. Buel’s house on North Street, Litchfield, 1888. Courtesy of Litchfield Historical Society.

With little in the way of accurate meteorological predictions, the blizzard came as a surprise to the Northeast on Sunday, March 11, 1888. It had been an unusually warm winter, and that day dawned with rain. It soon turned to hail, then sleet, then ultimately snow. Bitter cold and high winds set in, and the snow continued for three days. When it all stopped, between 20 and 50 inches of snow had fallen in Connecticut, with drifts of 12 feet not uncommon. (One drift in New Haven reached 40 feet high!) The storm resulted in more than 400 deaths and an estimated $20 million worth of damage.

Dr. Buel’s house after the snow had melted. One source says the snow was melted within ten days; another says the last of the drifts didn’t melt until June! Courtesy of Litchfield Historical Society.

The following are excerpts about the blizzard from the Litchfield Enquirer:

March 12th – “The wind blew a perfect blizzard all day and the drifting and falling snow made even main streets almost impassable Monday night the storm continued with increasing fury and buildings rocked as though in a storm at sea.”

A modern view of Dr. Buel’s house.

March 13th – “On Tuesday morning the wind had lessened though still blowing a gale with the thermometer at or near zero. The most remarkable drifts are at Dr. [H. W.] Buel‘s. One, a little west of the house, about 20 feet, to a level with the eaves. There is an addition on the west of Dr. Buel‘s house, reaching- about to the eaves, which is almost completely covered by the snow, so that our reporter, walking- along the top of the drift, passed completely over the roof of this part of the house, and down on the northern side. There is a drift on the east which is even higher, shutting up one of the library windows completely, and reaching nearly to the top of one of the large firs which form a hedge on that side of the house.

March 14th – “The wind is northeast and considerable snow is still falling. People are about on snow shoes skees (sic) and snow shoes extemporized out of boards some carrying groceries to those in great want. Little business is doing. Most of the stores are closed. A few are open with people standing about comparing notes about tunneling to their woodsheds drifts over second story windows and other marvels of the great storm.”

The Lake Station, Bantam. Courtesy of White Memorial Foundation.

The Shepaug Railroad was out of service until March 16th. A railroad cut near the Lake Station (today the Cove in Bantam) was filled with a drift 22 feet deep!

And all this snow needed to be removed from the transportation network without the benefit of modern plows!

Carriage Steps

Posted on March 1, 2014 by pvermily

A prominent carriage step along North Street.

An earlier post examined the history of Litchfield’s hitching posts. A similar reminder of Litchfield’s transportation history are the carriage steps (or mounting blocks) that dot North and South Streets.

Mounting blocks were simple stone blocks – often granite – that allowed passengers and easier way of climbing on board a carriage or stagecoach. Carriage steps were a fancier alternative, with two steps often carved into the stone.

A remnant of a mounting block along South Street.

While they were often found outside the homes of the town’s wealthier residents, they speak to the importance of carriages and stages and means of transportation. These conveyances brought students to the Tapping Reeve Law School and Sarah Pierce’s female academy. The wealth and cultural refinement of these students helped establish the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Litchfield in the early 19^th century.

A stagecoach in Farmington; it was perhaps bound for Litchfield.

Historian Lynn Brickley has written that while stagecoaches were forbidden from traveling at night, advertisements stated that the stage would leave Litchfield at 3 a.m. A stage could travel 4-5 miles per hour, with stops every ten miles to change horses. Still, rugged roads could slow the process, and the stage took 14 hours to travel 24 miles.

George Woodruff’s centennial inscription may have served as a mounting block.

Ultimately the arrival of the railroad would make stagecoaches no longer economically viable, and automobiles would do the same to carriages. The implements of horse-drawn travel – hitching posts and carriage steps – remain as testimony to their importance in an earlier age.

The Litchfield Garden Club

Posted on August 1, 2013 by pvermily

This stone flower urn stands at the intersection of North Street and Norfolk Road in Litchfield. There are no markers or inscriptions to tell the curious passerby when or why it was built, or by whom. Further investigation, however, reveals that this is one of the many contributions made by the Litchfield Garden Club to beautify the town.

2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the Litchfield Garden Club. On September 9, 1913, nine women from the Litchfield area met at the home of Edith and Alice Kingsbury on North Street and organized the club, with annual dues of two dollars. S. Edson Gage, an architect who had designed the Litchfield Playhouse that stood at the site of the current town hall, was elected president.

The old Litchfield train station on Russell Street.

The organization’s first civic project took place in 1914, when – in cooperation with the Village Improvement Society – they spent ten dollars for plantings at the town’s train station on Russell Street. After the First World War the club was active in maintaining the plantings at the train station as well as beautifying the grounds of the town’s schools and library, and in creating Litchfield’s Wild Gardens on land leased from White Memorial.

Flowers planted by the Garden Club in the trough of Litchfield’s Water Monument.

The Norfolk Road planter was installed in 1954 (the club’s website indicates there may have been others along Norfolk Road), flowers were planted at traffic intersections, and the organization was also instrumental in getting Litchfield’s Historic District added to the National Registrar of Historic Places. More recently, the club has replanted the trees along North and South Street that were originally planted by Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to commemorate the original 13 states and installed period lighting on the Litchfield Green.

Happy 100th anniversary to the Litchfield Garden Club, which has done so much to enhance the natural beauty of our town!

Hidden in Plain Sight

The public history of one Connecticut town.

Tag Archives: North Street

Victorian Fence Posts Along North Street

LHRR Series: The Last 1/10th Mile

The Blizzard of 1888

Carriage Steps

The Litchfield Garden Club

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