Waveny House needs so much work to get up to code and operate as a public building that—after baseline repairs are made, such as to its leaky roof—residents must decide just what role the cherished building should play in town, officials say.
Waveny House on Sept. 22, 2015. Credit: Michael Dinan
The Board of Selectmen should establish a committee that looks at Waveny House and answers this basic question, the town’s highest official said Tuesday: “What do we want that building to be?”
“Do we want it to be the offices of [the Recreation Department] and to store stuff?” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said at the board’s regular monthly meeting, held at Town Hall. “Do we want it to have 150 weddings a year and be a revenue generator?”
The comments came as the selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a $37,500 contract with a White Plains, N.Y.-based architectural firm to prepare for the first phase of capital work at Waveny. The architectural services from KSQ Architects will be based on a 2010 capital facilities plan that encompassed 16 structures in New Canaan (see page 35 of the Executive Summary and page 503 for detailed line items).
That plan calls for roof replacement as well as ADA ramps and toilets at Waveny House, a kitchen rebuild and new boiler and piping, among other projects.
Because 100-year-old electrical, plumbing and heating systems buried in concrete must be opened up to assess upgrades and repairs, the true scope of what’s needed at Waveny House is largely unknown, said Bill Oestmann, buildings superintendent with the Department of Public Works. With an elevator and other projects at the building, which may include air conditioning, an estimate based on the recently completed Town Hall renovation as a percentage of those costs based on square footage comes to about $5 million, Oestmann said.
Mallozzi said, “I think we can talk $5 million or $8 million or $10 million, depending on what the town of New Canaan, the citizens of New Canaan, want out of that building.”
The first selectman added: “In order spend the money, we have got to know what we are buying and what the projected use is.”
Oestmann said the Recreation Department staff that’s based at Waveny House could stay there during roof replacement but that when the more substantial work gets underway, they would need to swing into the main building at Irwin Park for about one year. As it stands, the town’s recreation director has weddings booked out for about 18 months, Oestmann said.
Mallozzi asked Selectmen Beth Jones and Nick Williams to help come up with a list of names of residents that could be appointed to a committee that would look at Waveny House and its future usage, just as a group now is looking at New Canaan Playhouse.
Williams called Waveny Park and House “the crown jewels of this town” and said that if a committee is looking at future use of the movie theater, “it seems to me even more important that we do that for Waveny, which is clearly within our park.” While questions of just how the Playhouse will function remain open, “clearly we are not going to get rid of Waveny or have somebody else run it,” Williams said. “So I think a look-see at what we should do with Waveny [House] and how much usage should there be is not a bad idea.”
Jones asked whether the recently formed Waveny Conservancy would weigh in on the building’s future use, and Mallozzi said yes, eventually, though the larger question of what the building will be used for must be answered first.
Jones said “a lot of stakeholders” should be brought into a discussion about Waveny House and that a master plan for the entire park should be developed.
“It would be a really wonderful thing [for Waveny House] to be ADA-compliant, as well as not have a leaking roof, and then from there it is all open,” she said. “And I don’t even know how I feel about it. So we really should take a close look and discuss it with an open mind and see what our options are.”
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Here’s a history of present-day Waveny Park property, which includes Waveny House, from Mimi Findlay of the New Canaan Preservation Alliance:
Waveny Park encompasses the planned landscape of the first resident, Thomas Hall, and later of the second resident, Lewis Lapham and his children, as an “American Country Place.”
The Hall Era: Thomas B. Hall, President of the American Hide and Leather Co[1], in 1895 purchased the 90-acre farm of the 18thcentury Elisha Leeds, creating the winding driveways and stone gateposts that remain today. He built a three-story Dutch Colonial residence with views over Long Island Sound. Over the years Hall added acreage, planted orchards and gardens and farmed. He erected numerous outbuildings including a carriage barn, an ice house to store blocks cut from the pond, a stone water tower, a superintendent’s cottage on the foundation of the Leeds’ farmhouse, and a power plant that ran on coal shipped by rail to the Talmadge Hill siding and then hauled to the farm in wagonloads. [2][3]
The Lapham Era: In 1904 Lewis H. Lapham purchased the property from Hall. He was the son of Henry G. Lapham, a colleague of Hall’s in the leather business, preparing to establish the United States Leather Company when he died in 1888. Lewis Lapham immediately hired the Olmsted Brothers, successor firm to Frederick Law Olmsted, to assist in the siting of a new residence to be designed by Brooklyn’s renowned architect, William B.Tubby, now living in Greenwich, and to create a grand landscape with gardens, terraces, small decorative garden structures, and an area of farm buildings.
Correspondence, In the National Park Service’s Olmsted Archives in Brookline, MA, there are over 100 letters between the firm and the Laphams, documenting the interaction between Lewis and Antoinette Lapham and the Olmsted Brothers firm, starting with John Charles Olmsted, who had attended the Sheffield Scientific School Yale University, who tried in vain to convince the Laphams to adopt scientific farming methods, breed special animals and plants, and practice “Aesthetic forestry.”
As the new house progressed from 1911 to 1917, the Olmsted firm sent several landscape architects of great talent and national reputation, Percival Gallagher, trained as an artist, and A. Chandler Manning, a horticulturalist, to work with Antoinette (Dearborn) Lapham, on the Waveny plantings and landscape. She was a founding member of the New Canaan Garden Club and also the national treasurer of the YWCA during World War I.
At the urging of son Jack, a polo field was installed by 1915 and at least 50 acres of lawn became an informal putting green and driving range for his father.
It is possible that Waveny’s landscape and gardens were photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnson, pioneer in photographing gardens during the American Country Place Era (1909-1927).
When the Merritt Parkway was designed, the Olmsted firm returned to mitigate the effects on the Lapham property, which was to be transversed. A tennis court, a polo field, and a tennis court were incorporated into the landscape design over the years.[4]
Ruth Lapham Lloyd, married Samuel R. Lloyd in 1924, had seven children and moved into Waveny mansion in 1940, when her mother moved into the Bungalow, Lewis H. Lapham having died in 1934. One of her children was Emmy-Award winner Christopher Lloyd, the actor. After Mrs. Lapham had moved to California and then died in 1956, Mrs. Lloyd was the inheritor of the property. By 1967 she had given two parcels of land to the Town of New Canaan for a new High School and then made Waveny, including the mansion, available to the town for purchase. Subsequently, she became a benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum, establishing an endowment to keep it open to the public on Thursday nights.
Ruth Lloyd’s brother, Roger Lapham, was Mayor of San Francisco. His grandson is Lewis A. Lapham, writer, author of numerous books on politics and current affairs, was editor of Harper’s magazine until 2006 and founder of Lapham’s Quarterly, a new journal about history.[5]
Significance: The buildings and landscape are of state and probably national significance, designed by prominent architects and landscape architects to create an “American Country Place”. In addition the individuals involved in the history of the property also have state and national significance as entrepreneurs, as participants in the early 20th century women’s movement, as politicians, actors and writers.
[1] Chicago Securities, Vol. 18
[2] Carol Valentine http://www.newcanaandarienmag.com/n/July-2008/The-Magic-of-Waveny/
[3] Lois Bayles, Mary Louise King, and F. David Lapham, The Story of Waveny, New Canaan CT: The New Canaan Historical Society, 1969
[4] Lois Baylis, Mary Louise King and F. David Lapham, The Story of Waveny, New Canaan Historical Society 1969 p.15.
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_H._Lapham