New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: The Freemasons

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. On the face of a dollar bill, there appears to be a pyramid with an eye at the top. Is this an illuminati, some other mysterious mythological symbol, or just an odd design? The truth is that this symbol comes from a brotherhood founded to promote self-improvement and a better world through the application of moral values, intellectual development, and mutual respect. 

They are the Freemasons, the world’s largest extant fraternity with deep ties to New Canaan. In 1733, a Great Lodge was established in Boston, marking the start of Freemasonry in New England.

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New Canaan There & Then: Captain George J. Santry

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. New Canaan resident Captain George J. Santry identified an important European technology to create the precast concrete that was used to build the Thule Airfield in Greenland, a top-secret U.S. Department of Defense Cold War project. 

He then brought the material to the United States where it was used by notable New Canaan architects Philip Johnson for various projects and John Johansen for the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. 

George Santry was director of the Joint Export Import Agency (JEIA) in the Office of the Military Government under the Marshall Plan following World War II. In his efforts to identify materials to rebuild Europe, he was introduced to the Schokbeton precasting system. In the 1930s, the need for cheap building materials became a worldwide economic crisis and for concrete, cement was the most expensive component. A method to fabricate more dense concrete of the same strength using less cement and water was developed. 

In 1932 the Schokbeton firm was created and rapidly expanded into a worldwide company.

New Canaan There & Then

There & Then: ‘Zion on Clapboard Hill’—The New Canaan Shakers, 1810-1812

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Two-hundred-and-fifteen years ago, a pioneering Shaker community was erected on present-day Clapboard Hill. Two years later, it was gone. What happened? New Canaan was once home to the experimental Fairfield County colony of the communal-living, celibacy-practicing Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing), whose namesake derives from their ecstatic forms of worship.

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New Canaan There & Then: The Poor House

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. The idea of a poor house preceded the establishment of the town of New Canaan in 1801. A Colonial Connecticut law mandated that “For the poor, it is ordered that they be relieved by the town where they live, every town providing for its own poor and so for important persons.” So when New Canaan was incorporated, it had to enter into agreements with Stamford and Norwalk to assume responsibility for two paupers from each who now lived within the newly-constituted town lines. In 1805, it built a house for Molly Hayes, a childless spinster, on what is now the corner of Locust and Summer Street. Her home had burned to the ground and she had no funds to replace it.

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New Canaan There & Then: Norman Dairy

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Norman Dairy was the largest dairy business in New Canaan. 

In 1914, Meyer Norman, who was born in Vilno, Russia in 1854 and emigrated to Stamford in 1884, founded the business on Old Stamford Road (the site of the current Elise Nursery.) Although it did not have cows, it purchased rich, high-quality milk from farmers in New York, which it then sold to residents in New Canaan, Norwalk, Darien, Stamford, and Greenwich. The business evolved from a distribution network of horses and wagons, to a fleet of trucks delivering milk, cream, cottage cheese, and eggs. And each driver carried a rule book with 32 Rules and Regulations governing his conduct. 

It was also part of one of the biggest labor strikes in New Canaan history. Beginning in January 1946, both Norman Dairy and Miller Dairy (the two largest) were under pressure from Local 338 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, A.F.L., to unionize all workers and increase wages.