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New Canaan Now & Then: The Mulliken Property [Part 1 of 2]

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‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris. In the early part of the century, Alfred H. Mulliken, a millionaire summer resident from Chicago, started purchasing tracts of land in the Oenoke area with the long term goal of creating a gated enclave similar to Tuxedo Park. 

Mulliken was born in Augusta, Maine in 1854. At the age of 15, he went to Chicago to seek his fortune, beginning his career as an office boy and eventually being offered a partnership in a company that supplied railroad equipment. 

Mulliken started his own firm with a Chicago banker, Asa C. Pettibone. When the success of his company required him to open a New York office, Mulliken began summering in New Canaan with his invalid wife and 15-year-old son. The Mulliken family rented the John B. Gerrish house off of Oenoke until it caught fire and then rented a second house across the way owned by Dr. Lambert which also caught fire.

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New Canaan Now & Then: ‘Gitanjali’

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‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris. “Gitanjali”, a poem by Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tajore, is the name given to the historic Tudor home at 298 Country Club Road. 

The poem’s title roughly translates to an “offering of song” and it appears that the house’s long history has been a muse for its inhabitants. 

The land records list the building date as 1917 but two different sources record the date as earlier (New England Home Magazine article dated April 13, 2010 lists the date as 1870 and the “Secret Garden Tour” of 2002 lists the date as 1890s). 

The 5,000-square-foot home, which was originally the guest house or coach house for a long demolished estate home, includes a potting shed, a stone gardener’s cottage, a pool house and swimming pool, two greenhouses, and a teahouse in its current inception. Incredibly, most of these structures are original to the property. (According to town permits in 1966 and 2004, the greenhouses were added.)  

The property is referred to as “Rat Tuttle’s Hill” in an Advertiser article from 1964. That same article explains that Country Club Road was laid out in 1761 (almost two centuries before the country club was erected).

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New Canaan Now & Then: Miss Ayres School

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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 house at 119 Seminary Street (some list it as 115) was once the New Canaan Institute or “Miss Ayres School,” established in 1873 by Harriet Ayres. 

According to a 1938 letter from former student W. Benedict, Miss Ayres School supported 25 to 35 students. She established the school because she found the 19th century public school inadequate to prepare students for college. Miss Ayres’ husband, Edward F. Ayres, died in 1900 and her eldest son, Edward, attended Yale where he won the sophomore prize in mathematics in 1886. 

One of her students, Percy Raymond, became a Harvard professor emeritus of paleontology and praised Miss Ayres as “the best teacher I have ever encountered.” An Advertiser article dated May 22, 1952 stated “she worshiped at the altar of culture and was responsible for several New Canaan boys who sought higher education and gave a pretty good accounting of themselves later in life.” In 1899 she retired from teaching after 30 years. 

She was the first president of the New Canaan Women’s Club—“thirty five brave progressive souls” who had their first meeting at No. 4 Railroad Avenue—present-day Elm Street—at the Reading Room on Sept.

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New Canaan Now & Then: The Joseph Weber Jr. Homestead

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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 Greek Revival Style home at 585 Old Stamford Road known as the Joseph Weber Jr. Homestead has been the residence for some of New Canaan’s earliest families. 

The original parcel of land was deeded to Joseph Smith from Seymour Talmadge. Joseph Smith was the son of “Tory Joe” Smith who had lost the family holdings during the Revolution. His new wife, Mary Talmadge, was the daughter of Joseph Talmadge of Flat Ridge. The Smith brothers expanded in this area -James the eldest remained in the family home; Minot had a house on Talmadge Hill; and Sherman built the home in 1840 for his new wife, Mary Elizabeth Hoyt. 

The property included a three-story cow barn which bears the architectural markings of a structure built in the 1700s, including wooden pegs/nails and “triple marks” on the beams. At one time, there were four barns on the property as indicated in the 1956 subdivision map. 

The New Canaan tax books in 1858 set the value of the home at $1600.

Greenley Tea Room

New Canaan Now & Then: The Greenley Tea Garden

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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 Greenley Tea Garden was opened by Orline A. Leonard St. John Alexander at her home located at 130 Greenley Road. 

”The property, originally consisting of 83 acres, was sold on May 9, 1883 passing from William St. John (residuary devisee under will of Lucy Weed) to George H. Wildman. A New Canaan Advertiser article dated December 10, 2008 reports that William St.