Industries and Industrialists: New Listings on the State and National Registers

            Four sites recently added to the State or National Register of Historic Places illustrate chapters in Connecticut’s industrial history.

            The Chamberlin Mill in Woodstock, listed on the State Register, is typical of small-scale industrial sites in rural areas that served local populations, primarily grinding grains or sawing lumber.

This saw mill was in existence by 1869 and operated until the1970s. It is unique in its completeness and preservation, including most of its machinery—even a cut-down 1928 Studebaker truck which supplanted water power in the mill’s later years.

            The Nature Conservancy acquired the mill in 2008 as part of the Still River Preserve, and a group of local residents, including the Woodstock Historical Society, an agricultural society, and some old-tractor buffs, is working to ensure the milll’s long-term preservation (see CPN, September/October 2009).

Like much of Connecticut, the Silvermine Center Historic District, lying on the border between Norwalk, New Canaan, and Wilton, might be called a postindustrial community. In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries various small and medium-sized mills appeared along the banks of the Silvermine River. Together with stores, a tavern, and the homes of the people who worked there, they made Silvermine a self-sufficient community, one of many scattered across Connecticut. Later in the 19^th century the village entered a period of decline, as most of the mills succumbed to competition from larger companies in larger cities.

In the 20^th century, artists and writers discovered Silvemine. In addition to their own remodeled homes and studios, the old tavern became an inn catering to travelers, and a number of other buildings became antique shops. But the small-scale vernacular architecture and irregular layout of the older community, preserved by the period of poverty, absorbed the changes. Most recently the community has become a more general suburb, although one still characterized by a strong arts community.

            Either by their absence or their presence, company owners played a dominant role in determining the physical appearance of industrial communities. In the Case Brothers Historic District, in Manchester, members of one family founded and ran a paper mill that that operated from 1862 to 1971. In addition to the mill itself, they built housing for workers and a company store (both now separated from the historic district by a highway).

Most importantly, the owners themselves lived in the community. They surrounded their own houses with gardens and a larger naturalistic landscape that included a 391-acre nature preserve that functioned (and has become) a town park.

The Case family’s lifestyle, set in elegant houses and gardens, was an example of the County Life movement of the early 20^th century, which advocated a genteel rural lifestyle as an antidote to the stresses of the cities. The houses are also an example of the compounds that many upper-class families built during the era (another such compound is the Cheney family’s Great Lawn, also in Manchester).

           Even away from their factories, owners added to the state’s built environment, as illustrated by Restmore, the summer home of Dr. Ira DeVer Warner, co-owner (with his brother Lucien) of the Warner Brothers corset company in Bridgeport. Warner’s architect, Ehrick Kensett Rossiter, chose an unusual architectural model for the house: Groote Shuur, the home of Cecil Rhodes, in Capetown, South Africa. The house’s stuccoed walls, shaded loggias, and shaped gables all reflect the Dutch colonial architecture of South Africa. Whether this stylistic choice was Rossiter’s or Warner’s, the unusual design reflects the architectural eclecticism of the early 20^th century. However, the interiors revert to the conventional Colonial Revival of the time.