New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: Silver Hill Hospital

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Silver Hill Hospital does extraordinary work in treating all who suffer from addiction and psychiatric disorders. And it has a fascinating history. 

Founded by John Millet in 1931, it started as the Silver Hill Inn, a place to help patients described as “nervous, depressed, anxious, or malingering.” Beginning in 1971, focus was placed on building the hospital’s substance abuse program. By 1984, that program was staffed by a psychiatrist, an associate psychiatrist, a psychologist, substance abuse counselors, nursing staff, and a recreational and occupational therapist.

New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: Shoemaking

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. As many in New Canaan know, shoemaking dominated New Canaan’s economy for more than a century. 

It all began with the Benedict family, who began making rough, wooden pegged shoes in 1768. These durable shoes were popular with New York laborers and southern plantation owners, who purchased them for enslaved field workers. The Ayres family made higher quality sewn shoes that they shipped to out-of-state upscale retailers. At the height of this industry, New Canaan produced 50,000 pairs a year.

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New Canaan There & Then: David Ogden

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Seven-and-a-half hours: the 2025 travel time from Liverpool, UK to New York City (with a layover). Seven weeks (plus trial and error of an additional two weeks): the 1844 transit time, along the same route, for New Canaan resident David Ogden. His harrowing journey was chronicled by historian David Finnie in the 1967 Annual published by the New Canaan Historical Society. 

From 1837 to 1844 David Ogden, (1811-1845), born in Fairfield, Connecticut, served as the Rector of St. Mark’s in New Canaan, a time in which he endured personal tragedies including the deaths of his wife and infant son.

New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: The Harvard Five

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Many of us enjoyed the recent screenings of Devon Chivvis’ long-awaited film The Harvard Five, about the talented group of architects from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design who, with their professor Marcel Breuer, settled in New Canaan and built the innovative midcentury modern houses for which this Town is now famous. The film is a must-see. And while all of these architects went on to have illustrious careers, Philip Johnson is arguably the most famous of all. In 1906, Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio to a wealthy and educated family.

New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: The Telephone Comes to Town

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. A fascinating article by Marshall H. Montgomery titled “It Deserves to be Celebrated or The First One Hundred Years of the telephone in New Canaan” appears in the 1981 Annual published by the New Canaan Historical Society. It provides a broad overview of the milestones in bringing telephone service to the town New Canaan. Here are some of the highlights:

The first telephone system began operating in New Haven, Connecticut in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. It had a switchboard and a directory printed upon a plain card.