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New Canaan Now & Then: The Mardon House

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‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris. 785 Smith Ridge Road, known as the Mardon House, was named for Marjorie and Donald F. Crane who built the home in 1937. 

Donald Crane was a long standing summer resident from New York who fondly remembered as a ten year old boy boarding at the Keeler Farm and riding to Stamford with Farmer Keeler when he drove the big truck to deliver his vegetables. Crane graduated from Cornell in 1910 and served as a first lieutenant in the field artillery in World War I. He married Marjorie Oppenheim who had served as an ambulance driver in France during World War I.

The Cranes had two children, Anthony Barnum Crane and Donald Frazer Crane, Jr. Anthony Crane attended St. Lukes School, the Kent School, and Cornell University. Sadly, Anthony Crane died in a fatal car accident in South Bend, Indiana at the age of 31 in 1960.

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New Canaan Now & Then: The Haviland Estate

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‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris. The Haviland Estate located at 276 Park Street  (or 259 Park Street in 1954) included a house built by the local carpenter Samuel O. Everett in 1915, who lived on Richmond Hill.  

When Samuel died in 1917 the property was passed to his children: George E. Everett, Carrie L. Brown and Emilie D. Gonzalez. In 1920 the property was sold to Julian C. Gonzales and Edith G. Hiltel. The house boasts a unique design for the area with its large scale salt box and side entry and projected bay windows. The Stamford Advocate reported in 1968 that Park Street was known as “Quality Street” because families of high quality had chosen to live along its length.

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New Canaan Now & Then: Clapboard Hill Farm

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‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris. The property at 306 Carter Street, once a “gentleman’s farm” known as Clapboard Hill Farm,  was established by architect Ernest Greene in 1908. The existing main building was originally a garage and servants quarters that was converted into a private residence. The home is bisected by a fieldstone chimney flanked by French doors at the first story, and there is an inset porch. According to historian Nils Kerchus, the converted garage is a “good example of an auxiliary estate structure designed in the Single style.” The conversion of a garage to a house would have involved a  number of alterations.