I SEEMA BE BUSY

Sorry for not posting in a while, and it might be a bit before I get to the next one. All those trips to southeastern Connecticut have paid off; I will be moving into my new house in three weeks. "New" is perhaps the wrong term here.

The Standish House, located in Preston, Connecticut (about four miles east of Norwich), was built as a two-room home with a dual central fireplace in 1690 by one of the sons of that famous Massachussett's Bay Colonist Myles Standish. Apparently his sons spread out across southern New England to seek their fortunes elsewhere, building small houses known locally as 'Standish Homesteads' throughout eastern Connecticut and across Rhode Island. This is the only one known to still be standing in Connecticut. It appears to have had an expansion around 1720 to achieve its present Cape Cod style shape (squarish footprint with a gable roof), and the small wing additions on the north and south were added at different times in the 20th century. The second story (such as it is) is floored with chestnut, which also underlays the heart pine on the first floor. Most doors are original to the 1720 expansion, and they measure all of 7/8" thick. The original hardware can be seen throughout the house.

Much will need to be done on the property, but I expect to enjoy every bit of the restoration. The timber-framed barn will be first; a new roof, putting in some sort of footers to support the verical timbers, and stripping the asphalt from the outside are good for starters. It also looks to be made of chestnut and heart pine. Probably why it's lived almost three hundred years. Nix that being first; first I will remove the goofy shutters, stupid shrubbery, and will build a picket fence.

I'll have to update my bio, I guess, as I'll be working for Early New England Restorations of Stonington/Pawcatuck. This last stint in Arkansas, which lasted eight years, has been enough. I'm ready for some cold weather.

So, I hear you ask, why did the Standish boys run off just when things were getting hot and heavy in Massachusetts? Were they witches (it WAS 1690, you know; and the height of the Salem Witch Trials was two years away)? I doubt it. New England is rife with stories of people running off to find more likeable accommodations elsewhere.

When I first moved to Connecticut in 1982, I delved deeply into its fascinating history with both hands and brain. I discovered that many towns of a common name are located close to one another, with that name changed slightly in neighboring towns. For instance, Cornwall is a stone's throw from North Cornwall, which is adjacent to Cornwall Hollow and West Cornwall, and all are north of Cornwall Bridge. Why so many Cornwalls? Simple. One town became too cloistered for the population, which splintered and splintered and splintered again because of arguments, economic conditions and other opportunities. But they stayed within shouting distance.

The settlement of New England went the same way. When the Puritans decided the Church of England was just to liberal for them, they skedaddled across the pond to America and settled around Boston and Salem. When those towns became too stuck-up for the more forward thinking people, those liberal thinkers jumped boats and sailed south until they found Narragansett Bay, and so founded the Providence Colony. When Providence seemed too conservative, some other folks sailed down the coast to find a better place, but even that short trip split the group into two. One settled at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River and founded the New Haven Colony and the other sailed up this big river they found coming from the north. These were the most liberal thinkers of all, and the colony they Founded, the Connecticut Colony, was and still is one of the most progressive cities in America today. Though some say the first town was Wethersfield and some say it's Windsor, the city known as Hartford is a s blue as they come.

THE CADDEN.

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

 

I like this storefront in the heart of Norwich’s historic downtown. It remains very close to original, with its wood panels and indented doorway. Even the door itself looks original. The transom windows remain; many times commercial transoms have been covered over with metal, giving a great storefront a black eye. Sure, the upper windows are likely replacements, but I like the signage. There’s something comforting about windows festooned with information about what goes on inside. I imagine the gallery folks below the BAIL BONDS sign cringe a bit when they see it, though. A little more subtle lettering and an archaic font would suit it better. But then jailbirds can’t be choosebirds I guess.

I’d personally like to see a more diverse color scheme; the two grayish blues are too alike for me. The magnificent pressed-steel cornice is the finest feature of the building, and should be painted in such a way as to stand out and say ‘Look at me!’ I can envision a three tiered color scheme on that, including the little wreaths painted to stand out more.

Apparently Cadden got around quite a bit in this burg, what with the Plaut-Cadden building I featured a few posts ago. I’m not sure just what makes this THE Cadden, though. It is decidedly older than the multi-storied Plaut-Cadden.

This one is also spelled with a period.

BANK

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

This is apparently no longer a bank, if the missing lettering is to be believed. It’s hard to read in my photo, but it looks to have been The Thames National Bank when I blow it up. The giant vault alarm must have made one hell of a noise when it went off, though by the look of the structure, only a meteor impact or direct hit with a cobalt bomb would scratch the thing. Banks used to be designed to reflect strength and permanence, but given the state of the economy and the financial world, they now often festoon their exteriors with mirrored windows. Or smoky glass. How appropriate.

I have no idea what the building is used for today. There is a tiny sign in the door’s window, but I can’t read it from here in Arkansaw.

CHRISTOPHER HUNTINGTON HOUSE GUTTER

NORWICHTOWN, CONNECTICUT

 

It’s not that this house is remarkable; in fact, for ancient Norwichtown, it’s rather austere. None of the classical Connecticut pediments I’ll feature in the next few posts; even the doorway seems to shrink back from itself. No scrollwork or multi-tiered cornices, the front doorway is straight, flat, and only different in that it has two narrow sidelites framing the door. More Federal-looking than Colonial. But it was built around 1720, so pay attention.

What caught my eye was the gutter.

Made from a couple of one-by-sixes (actually a misnomer; they are not one anything by six anythings at all) attached at a ninety-degree angle with triangular end caps, this is a gutter that reflects the past. It is quite authentic in its design.

New England was and still is rich in trees, so anything that could be made of wood, well, was. Metal gutters would have been accompanied by a tax, because smelting metal in the New World was illegal. So you bought it as sheet metal from a England and the supplier that paid enormous taxes on it, passed on the cost to you, and the Crown got the dough.

We had a little war because of this. Tea in Boston Harbor and all that. No taxation without representation. Power to the people. Off the pigs.

Sorry, I digressed.

But enterprising craftsmen (of which there were positively scads in Connecticut) put together water drainage systems like this one, though it is not original. Duh. Lined with a simple sheet of lead, it would easily keep the gathered water from the roof from disintegrating the side of your house, which was also built from wood.

This particular gutter is likely lined with galvanized steel or sheet copper, has one hell of a fall, and it does a fine job of keeping the siding and windows intact. As well as keeping the rain off your head. And it can be repaired as opposed to replaced. Keep the craftsmen employed and your home cared for by an individual that cares.

More on that in the next few posts.

COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

NORWICH, CONNECTICUT

Downtown Norwich is rife with great architecture. It positively OOZES cool buildings. Some date from colonial times.

 

Some are from more modern times.

 

Norwich has also suffered from what much of the industrial Northeast has experienced; changes in economic conditions. What started as a shipping center in the 18^th and 19^th centuries morphed into a center of specialty manufacturing by the turn of the 20^th century. The might and profit of the mills birthed many beautiful multi-storied commercial buildings in the hilly downtown, and place positively buzzed with commercial life.

Alas, as happened with the steel, furniture, and clothing businesses in other parts of the country, the expansion of overseas trade ended much of the manufacturing done by the local mills. Some mills have been converted to other uses, some sit empty. Their future is uncertain, but it is likely many will be put to other uses at some time.

It’s just too expensive to knock the damn things down; they’re all built like brick chickenhouses. Hopefully they’ll have a fabulous reuse.

               Abandoned Textile Mill, Taftville, Connecticut, a few miles from Norwich

And where there are successful mills, the commercial districts are fairly opulent. So it is with downtown Norwich. Sadly, though, many of the buildings sit idle, vacant, and unused. Great bones, few tenants. The Norwich Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit that advocates for the restoration and reuse of the commercial district structures, has a plethora of economic incentives and programs to help investors make profitable use of these buildings.

But there are a lot of them, and some owners are more responsible than others.

My featured building for this post is the Plaut-Cadden Building.

 

The storefront was boarded up when this picture was taken in September of 2012, and it likely still is. At five stories, it is of middling height for this town of 40,000 souls, but it has some absolutely wonderful features. I only wish I took better pictures of them.

I’m sure the building is unoccupied, and several aspects have been altered. I have no idea if the weathered wood window frames are original (probably) but the vertical planks above the awning are undoubtedly an addition. Either that, or they are the backing for a veneer long since gone, perhaps enameled sheet metal as in Young’s Block. The weathered condition of the window frames saddens me, but as all the window designs are uniform, I imagine they are original (or all replaced at the same time, which I doubt). The transoms are all pretty much uniform through the second and third floors, though on the second story they are divided and on the third they are not.

The horizontal brown stripe above the second story window is hardly decorative, but appears to be a large piece of steel that spans the larger windows below and carries the weight of the building above. I just wonder if it had another covering at an earlier time.

But it is the semi-rococo masonry above the third floor that..floors me. The interior detail is nearly Greek, with its squared designs, but the Egyptian seems to shine through as well. The whole thing, when viewed from a distance, lends itself to Morocco or Algiers.

 

Then the builders topped the whole thing with a magnificent molded cornice made from pressed sheet copper and sent me reeling.

See what there is in the city if you just look around? I wonder how many people walk by this building every day without noticing those elements. I nearly got run over just trying to photograph them.

Downtown Norwich is a treasure just waiting to be discovered. To be invested in. To be turned into a go-to destination. It reminds me of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a town like no other. Built upon a steep mountainside, this healing-water city from the 1880s was built from local carved stone and baked brick, with each two-story building growing to five on the lower slope. It enjoyed a booming economy until the patent-medicine/healing waters craze of the early 20^th century faded. Then the buildings sat empty until groups of hippies came through in the 1960s and pretty much bought up the town. They opened artist’s studios and small restaurants. They dressed up the town with flowerbeds and made sure the word got out among the Hippie Elite. And they came. And they stayed.

Eureka Springs is now known worldwide as a cool, hip, fun destination.

All because of a few longhairs, some vision, and hard work.

I think Norwich, with its fine waterfront, great architecture, winding, hilly streets, and great location, could be a far cooler destination than Eureka Springs.

Go there. You’ll see.

JOSEPH CARPENTER STORE

NORWICHTOWN CONNECTICUT

 

Norwichtown is the oldest section of Norwich, Connecticut. Located on a high hill on the west side of town, it’s a living neighborhood with Colonial homes so authentic that you’d expect Myles Standish to come out one of the front doors. Indeed, the huge rectangular town  square, often referred to as a ‘parade ground’ in Connecticut towns, is surrounded by beautifully restored homes, many of which were taverns back in the goodle days.

One of my favorites is the Joseph Carpenter store, built around 1772. This gambrel-roofed beauty has the clapboard siding and vertical plank doors common to homes of that era, but the windows and their treatments are what caught my eye.

 

The side windows are quite typical of this type of house, with nine-over-nine lite double-hung sashes, but in front, the fifteen-lite single sashes are not double hung. Rather, they appear to be of the casement type, with sashes that swing inward on side hinges. It’s possible that they are fixed, but Yankees are a pretty practical lot, and ventilation would seem necessary. Just why one of the sashes is made as a twenty-lite, I have no idea.

This being a store, I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong, Norwichians) that the double entry gave ingress to a residence on one side and a commercial space on the other.

But it is the shutter treatments I like best.

 

Hinged horizontally, they appear to be original, or at least close to the age of the home. Built from nailed planks, the shutters seem sturdy enough to repel an Indian attack, though in 1772, there were few threats from Native Americans in this area. Perhaps because it was a store that the shutters were needed. There was a local war that erupted in Massachusetts in the latter half of the decade, and though I have no knowledge of the British invading Norwich, it was undoubtedly on the minds of the locals at the time.

The hardware that keeps the upper shutter open is definitely hand-forged. Likely right there in the neighborhood.

 

I’ve not seen anything like these shutters or the hardware anywhere else in New England, but I’ll wager they aren’t singular.

YOUNG’S BLOCK

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

Norwich, located in the eastern side of the state, is an ex-mill town at the confluence of the Shetucket, Quinebaug, and Yantic Rivers. The three rivers converge to form the Thames River (pronounced ‘thaymes’ by the locals), a beautiful, wide estuary with towering forested cliffs that run all of fifteen miles to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The town is quite an architectural treasure, with winding streets that twist and climb the granite and schist hills above the river. The mills have long since been abandoned, though a few have been converted to other uses. But the downtown flourished as the mills prospered, and the buildings there still hold the past out at arm’s length for all to see. It’s worth a visit.

I’ll be featuring some of the best and worst of some of this architecture in some of the following posts.

I’m going to begin with a building that might be in Anytown, U.S.A.

 

Young’s Block is the name on the moniker stone, and I never did find out if Young had more of the block under his thumb or if it was just this building, but it caught my eye as soon as I saw it. I was touring the town for the first time, and became so captivated by the area I decided to move there. It hasn’t happened yet, but give it a few months.

The building looks like a small diner or restaurant or even more like a drugstore with a soda fountain. I like the operating clock (with the correct time, yet), the stainless steel trim around the enameled sheet steel edges and as rocket-jockey (rocky- jocket?) wings around the clock and at the angles. I especially like the modernist flat bricks at the parapet; all these together speak of late 1940s or 50s. I can see the bobby sox, poodle skirts and white leather sleeves on lettered jackets. I can smell the burgers and hot dogs, the yellow mustard, the Brylcreme. I can hear Chuck Berry, Perry Como, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The phone rings, and Murray, the owner, answers.

“Billy, ya maw sez ya gawta get home!”

The façade looks to be mostly original, though the doors look 1960s or 70s. A good look at the moved-over trim on the right side makes me think there were wood doors that did not make it through the years. I wonder about the foundation vents; what could they possibly be ventilating?

I like the retro streetlight (made in Mexico), the flowers (real petunias; how do they water them?), and the ‘chopped’ storefront, which gives the façade its retro charm. I also like that it’s a short-term employment office called “Labor Ready.” There is a place in our culture for these, and the fact that they advertise “Work today, paid today” makes me smile. The few times I worked at Manpower back in my pre-salad days, I had to wait two weeks for a check.

Apparently they also sell safety equipment. Good mix; day labor and safety equipment.