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New Canaan There & Then: ‘The Ice Storm’

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. It’s Thanksgiving, 1973, and in New Canaan, as elsewhere, kids have come home from school and families have gathered to celebrate the traditional start of the holiday season. That’s the backdrop of The Ice Storm, the 1997 masterpiece of suburban affluence, family dysfunction and quiet desperation.  Directed by Ang Lee, the screenplay written by James Schamus was adopted from the 1994 novel of the same name by former New Canaan resident Rick Moody. The Ice Storm was filmed primarily in New Canaan; in fact there is so much of New Canaan presented on screen – Town Hall, the Metro-North Station, the old Varnum’s Pharmacy, Saxe playing fields, the (original) New Canaan Library, and several Mid-Century Modern homes nestled in our hilly woods – that it is difficult to imagine any other town filling the void.  

Ironically one of the few scenes that was not shot in New Canaan, the infamous Thanksgiving night “key party” gathering, was actually filmed in Greenwich. The Ice Storm featured a mix of then seasoned and up-and-coming actors, including Kevin Kline and Joan Allen as Ben and Elena Hood (701 Laurel Road), and Jamie Sheridan and Sigourney Weaver as their best friends and  neighbors, Jim and Janey Carver (581 Laurel Road); filming at both addresses included exterior and interior shots.  Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes and Allison Janney rounded out the outstanding cast.  

The film grossed only $16 million worldwide, but was highly acclaimed critically, including receipt of the Palme d’Or for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and Gene Siskel lauding it as his favorite film of 1997.

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New Canaan There & Then: A Local Gem—The Little Red Schoolhouse

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Steve Karl was four years old the first time he visited the one-room Little Red Schoolhouse on Carter Street in town. “I remember the tiny wooden desks lined up in neat rows,” he recalled. “I remember the outdoor manual water pump in the front yard that we loved to play around with. I also have a vivid memory of the oil painting of Aesop’s fables above the entrance to the classroom, facing the students.” 

That mural, and four others, were the product of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and painter Justin Gruelle, who was part of the Silvermine Group of Artists, in 1936.

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New Canaan Now & Then: Congregational Church

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Without the Congregational Church of New Canaan, there would be no Town of New Canaan. In the first decades of the 18th century, residents of Norwalk and Stamford pushed north seeking additional land, and on May 13, 1731 Puritans living in present-day New Canaan obtained authorization from the Connecticut General Assembly to form the ecclesiastical society of Canaan Parish. Why “Canaan”? As Mary Louise King wrote in her impressive 1981 history of our town, “Portrait of New Canaan”:

Neither then nor in later years did anyone record when, how and why “Canaan” was chosen as the parish’s name.

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New Canaan There & Then: Waveny LifeCare Network

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. In a somewhat exhaustive 1992 history of Waveny Care Center, the (unknown) authors’ first sentence was as follows:

“In the early 1960’s several New Canaan people became concerned that an increasing number of their neighbors, many of them long time residents who had contributed much to the growth, development and appeal of the community, felt obligated to move out of town because of a lack of appropriate housing accommodations and inadequate support services for the elderly.”

Sound familiar? While dedicated senior housing still remains an elusive goal for New Canaan, Waveny LifeCare Network (formerly Waveny Care Center) has for over 50 years provided much more-than-adequate support services for the elderly, with a continuum of healthcare to serve the changing needs of seniors from New Canaan and beyond. And the history of Waveny LifeCare is fascinating, starting in 1961 when a small highly motivated group of respected town doctors joined with the clergy of seven New Canaan churches to form the Interchurch Service Committee, with the intention of addressing the problem detailed in that first sentence. The Committee was frustrated in its efforts though the ‘60s to find a suitable and available site, and it wasn’t until early in 1969 that the Committee realized that a portion of the estate recently given to the Town of New Canaan by the magnificent Mrs. Ruth Lapham Lloyd might be the answer.

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New Canaan There & Then: The Maxwell Perkins 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. William Maxwell Evarts “Max” Perkins was the preeminent editor, and in many cases discoverer, of the greatest authors of 20th century American literature, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kennan Rawlings, James Jones and Ring Lardner. And Perkins lived, and died, in New Canaan. Perkins’ first encounter with New Canaan was in the summer of 1924, when he rented a cottage on the outskirts of town. “You would hate it,” he wrote his close friend Fitzgerald, “But I like it.”

Perkins liked it so much that later that year he purchased a gracious Greek Revival house located on 63 Park Street, steps away from the train station that he would commute from for the rest of his life.