Stratford CT homes from the past

Another blogger started writing about historic homes in Stratford, CT.  This is the only post I could find, however, so I've included it here

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Our House: Lean on Me

This is the first of what we hope will become a series of “biographies” of houses in the Historic District. We invite submissions from owners of any neighborhood homes, old or not. They needn’t be essay-length — even sharing just a few paragraphs about what you find most interesting or endearing about your home would be of interest to neighbors. And of course please include an image. If you don’t have a photo of your home, we would be happy to take one (at no charge) to include with your post. Please send submissions to mbingham@conntact.com.

Our house is a very, very, very old house, with two cats in the yard (but only if they sneak out the door — they’re supposed to be house cats).

The sign on the front of our house at 2134 Elm Street reads “John Curtis c. 1740.” But most people in Stratford have a different name for it: the Leaning House (variant: the Crooked House).

Whatever. To our family, it’s just Our Home. We bought it in August 1999. We were probably crazy, but here we still are, 13 years later.

I first laid eyes on this house in, I think, 1996 or 1997. I had lived in New Haven for ten years, but had never spent any time in Stratford. My then girlfriend and now wife, Nancy Monk, had grown up in Stratford. Her father was the rector (that’s Episcopalian talk for “head priest”) at Christ Church in the 1960s and ‘70s, and Nancy grew up in the big white house kinda/sorta across the street from the church on Main Street.

One rainy Sunday we drove to Stratford so Nancy could show me the landmarks of her youth. She showed me the church, and the rectory, and Shakespeare Theater (which I had never heard of). Then we turned onto Broad Street next to St. James, and drove east toward the river.

Out of the drizzle appeared this barn-red apparition with parrot-orange front doors and a discernable (though I like to think jaunty) rearward tilt to it: 2134 Elm — the Curtis “mansion” (LOL). As we drove closer Nancy sighed and said, “I’ve always loved that house.”

A couple years later when we bought it, it was one of the proudest moments of my life that we would live in the house my dear wife had “always loved.”

As other homeowners in the Historic District know well, the idea of living in an 18th century house is a lot more romantic than the reality. The idea: living history, neighborhood icon, enduring construction, great fireplace(s). All true. But so is the reality: Things always breaking, ridiculous heating bills, never a moment when you can say without guilt that everything in the house is “fixed.”

People who come to our house for the first time always say they love it, while we roll our eyes. But there’s a lot to love — the nine-foot hearth in the keeping room, the beautiful woodwork and cabinetry, the wide-planked pine floors. When we look at the hand-hewn beams, we think to ourselves: Some guy built this house with an axe — and it’s still here.

Living in a house that old definitely connects you to history. As far as we know, we are only the fourth family to occupy 2134 Elm Street in 272 years (granted, successive generations of the Curtis family lived there for about 200 years).

So…why is it leaning? We actually don’t really know. Someone told us that there had been an earthquake in southern New England some time around 1802 (the early 19th century had some really weird weather events, including 1816, known as the “Year Without a Summer” due to a succession of major volcanic eruptions worldwide that caused major food shortages in the Northern Hemisphere). Supposedly that earthquake knocked our house slightly off its foundation. Nancy and I kind of like this theory, because it implies that the structure has been stable for 210 years. But we don’t really know.

Some neighborhood old-timers have told us our house is haunted, and there is evidence in support of that. A relative of an in-law told us once she witness a female figure dress in Colonial garb walking through the wall of the house. More recently Nancy was napping in our bedroom on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when suddenly a heavy jewelry chest flew off the bureau and onto the floor — on its own.

We have been told that our “ghosts” are two elderly (well, dead, actually) spinster sisters whose names the previous owners of our house, Cynthia and Bob Conley, knew. But I don’t remember them. As they have put in only one appearance in our 13 years on Elm Street, we hope they are mainly benign, or at least tolerant of us.

We have two outbuildings. The “barn” was actually used as a cobbler’s shop by one of the later Curtises, we guess some time in the 19th century, The other, smaller outbuilding (not very noticeable from the street) was actually an outhouse with — get this — three seats (I know — ewww). But don’t worry: we use it only as a garden shed, so don’t go calling the Health Department on us.

Living in an ancient house is hard, but definitely a labor of love (and you need to love to labor). But as we remind ourselves when the going gets tough, we don’t live just in a house — we live in a neighborhood. A neighborhood we’ll always love.

— Michael C. Bingham

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Judson House
Capt. David Judson built a Georgian-style house in Stratford around 1750 (or as early as 1723), on the foundation of his great-grandfather William‘s stone house of 1639. Nine generations of the family lived in the house until 1888 . The Judson House, which is now a museum, is known for its particularly fine broken scroll pediment door surround.

Lighthouse
In 1822, an octagonal wooden lighthouse tower and 1 1/2 story keeper’s quarters were erected at Stratford Point, in the section of Stratford called Lordship, located at the mouth of the Housatonic River. It was only the third light station to be built on Long Island Sound. The current brick-lined, cast-iron tower and adjacent keeper’s dwelling were built in 1881. The tower was originally all white, but was later painted red around the middle. Stratford Point Light was automated in 1969 and the lantern room was removed to be displayed at Boothe Memorial Park in Stratford. In 1990, the restored lantern room was returned to its place atop the tower. A Coast Guard family currently lives at the lighthouse.

Boothe Homestead, Historic homestead and museum of Americana. By Magicpiano - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53634585

The Boothe Memorial Park in Stratford, has preserved many historic buildings and has a web presence here,and is well documented at Wikepedia HERE

Boothe Homestead, Stratford CT

Yes, we are related to David and Stephen Boothe who built the park and donated it to Stratford, with an interesting collection of buildings.  They are descendents of Hannah Wilcoxan Booth and Joseph Booth.  So we're some number of cousins removed.