Around Town

Hollywood East: New Canaan’s Film Connections

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On Sunday, 2008 New Canaan High School graduate Alex Coco won an Academy Award as a producer of Best Picture-winner “Anora.” The movie is currently showing at The Playhouse, where Coco himself participated in a screening and Q&A with CinemaLab CEO Luke Parker Bowles in January. While Coco was a senior at NCHS, he made a film titled “The Tale of the Three Lovers” (viewable here) that was purchased by the Fritz Eager Foundation for Art Education, established in memory of NCHS graduate Frederick “Fritz” Eager in 1969 to buy student art, the year after he passed (many locals will know the “NCHS Senior Art Awards”). Coco’s achievement forms a new and important tie between New Canaan and Hollywood, a connection that Terry Dinan examined in the article below, first published in 2015. —Michael Dinan

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With their proximity to New York City, many suburban communities in Fairfield County can stake a claim to Hollywood—sometimes tenuous connections of actors passing through or keeping residences, or big screen scenes shot in town. That said, perhaps no town in our area has as many legitimate ties to Tinseltown as New Canaan.

Around Town

South Avenue Landmark: Brooks Sanatorium, Reincarnated

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South Avenue has undergone a conspicuous transformation these last many years. Once lined with mid-20th century Capes and Colonials, it’s now dominated by modern, custom-built homes. (Nothing wrong with that. It’s just … different.)

One holdover from the “old” South Avenue is a gorgeous three-story home at the corner of Brooks Road, with the columned wraparound porch and dormer windows looking out over a perfectly manicured front lawn. The home is not only a throwback to an earlier time, but also has a significant history in the annals of New Canaan itself.

Around Town

A History of Christmas Caroling at God’s Acre

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Caroling at God’s Acre for Christmas is one of New Canaan’s most cherished events of the year, a nostalgic, Rockwellian gathering that brings the community together unlike any other celebration. A sacred and treasured tradition, the Christmas Eve gathering distinguishes New Canaan from surrounding towns. Held on the plot of land above which the Congregational Church was built—the institution upon which the town was founded—the caroling sees scores of New Canaanites descend each year on what literally is hallowed ground, as it is believed many of New Canaan’s settlers are still buried at God’s Acre. But how did it start, and when? The first documented instance of caroling at God’s Acre occurred on Christmas Eve in 1916, according to historian Mary Louise King’s book Portrait of New Canaan, published by the New Canaan Historical Society.

Town Living

In Search of New Canaan History: Stephen Weed’s Fort

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New Canaan’s long and storied history has produced its fair share of characters and legends, some apocryphal, some true. One such legend and character is Stephen Weed and the story of his Revolutionary War-era fort. Weed was a Canaan Parish soldier in the American Revolution who helped defend New York against the British under the command of Captains John Carter and Daniel Benedict, historians say. According to 1951’s “Landmarks of New Canaan,” published by the New Canaan Historical Society, he was captured and ultimately imprisoned in the notorious Sugar House prison in New York City. Eventually Weed was released and returned home, though as a shell of his former self: His battlefield experience and subsequent imprisonment had caused postwar syndrome.

Around Town

Dantown: The ‘Atlantis of New Canaan’

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Drive slowly along the upper reaches of Ponus Ridge and you can glimpse the last vestiges of a once-thriving New Canaan community, most of which now exists deep beneath the Laurel Reservoir. Beyond the chain link fence surrounding the lake, myriad stone walls crisscross through the trees, some of which suddenly disappear into the water. This is all that remains of Dantown. For Bob Tilden of Montour Falls, N.Y., the search for Dantown began as a search for his ancestors. One of these ancestors, Francis Dan, arrived in what was then Stamford in the late 17th Century, eventually settling a community by the Rippowam River near the New York state border.