0684 Old News Today

“New Canaan Now & Then” is presented in partnership with the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society. In honor of Women’s History Month, this week’s article focuses on Emma J. Bradley Burt Brown Kull, a local businesswoman who lived at 110 Forest Street.  Ms. Emma Josphine Hubbard was born in Walcott, Connecticut. Miss. Kull, or […]

A new exhibition two years in the making, “Forces of Change: Enslaved and Free Blacks in New Canaan,” opens Friday, March 3 at the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society at 13 Oenoke Ridge. We met with the organization’s executive director, Nancy Geary, to get some background and an overview of the widely anticipated exhibition.  […]

“New Canaan Now & Then” is presented in partnership with the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society. Broad Brook Farm, or 82 Ponus Ridge, as it was named by Edward Plaut in the 1930s, is now a group of houses that make up Broad Brook Drive (which runs directly through the former estate) and surrounding […]

The property located at 705 Weed Street, Stepping Stones, has an interesting past and represents one of the last remaining “grand mansions” in town.  The property was originally owned by Watts Comstock, who sold the property to produce tycoon Abraham Hatfield. The original house on the property was destroyed by fire, which prompted Mr. Hatfield […]

The Bank of America building at 94 Elm St. was built in 1929 and is a fine example of Georgian Colonial architecture.  Its design complements the Playhouse Theater located directly across the street. The building is set 20 feet back from the street. Before the building was erected, quick work was made of razing the […]

Number 55 St. John’s Place, an elegant, Victorian home built in 1848 by Francis E. Weed had six owners before it became the property of Samuel Henry Watts, and his wife Bell McKerlie in 1946.  Mr. and Mrs. Watts were fixtures in the town and their home reflected their commitment to growing strong roots in […]

The historical marker on the corner of Luke’s Wood Road and Oenoke Ridge is all that remains of Pinney’s Corner.  Pinney Corner, former home of Henry Augustus Pinney, was a bustling community in the 1880s. Pinney, originally from Milford Pennsylvania, had a brief residency in Pleasantville, New York before moving to New Canaan in 1868. […]

The quaint storefront of Bluemercury at 120 Main St. has been a place of commerce since its construction in the 1850s. The building was originally built by Sereno Ogden who was also responsible for the construction of the Vine Cottage (c. 1859). The earliest known business to operate in this space was a meat market […]

In 1650, the Connecticut Colonial Legislature enacted the first compulsory school law but it wasn’t until 1795 that the state began supplying state funds for education.  New Canaan’s first one-room schoolhouse was built circa 1799 by residents of New Canaan’s School District 2.  The Rock School, as it was called, was located originally at Canoe […]

The first known structure built where 17 St. John Place now stands was, of all things, an observatory.  This structure was built sometime in the mid 1800s by Dr. Samuel St. John, who used the space not only to gaze at the stars but also as a library and a classroom.  Circa 1900, the observatory […]