New Canaan Now & Then: The Bliss Estate [Part 1 of 2]

‘New Canaan Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris.

The Nature Center on Oenoke Ridge occupies the former Bliss Estate, or “Lindenfield” (because the driveway was lined with Linden trees). 

In 1875 Osborn E. Bright, an attorney from Brooklyn, bought eight acres of land on Oenoke Ridge from Joseph Fitch Silliman and built his summer residence. When finished, the new house stood very close to the neighbor’s cow barn, so close in fact that Bright’s wife, Maria, offered to build the neighbors a new barn if they would tear down the existing one.  A new barn could also not be built within 100 feet of the Brights’ land.  At the same time, the Brights also bought a piece of land from the same neighbor for $200. 

In 1899, the property was sold to Ms. Catherine A. Bliss from New York City for $22,500.  Over the next thirteen years, Ms. Bliss expanded the house and improved the grounds, adding specimen trees such as purple beech and Asia oaks. A full wing was added along with a large living room and a porch. The living room was so large that it was able to fit a thirty six foot rug, which was said to have been the second largest rug ever woven in America at the time. 

The house built by the Brights would eventually become a hall and a dining room with bedrooms on the second floor. Ms. Bliss developed the property into a beautiful English style estate and made updates to the mansion, added a cow barn and laundry building, and built a “car barn”. When she died in 1915 after undergoing a stomach operation at Roosevelt Hospital in New York, the estate was left to seven relatives, including Susan Dwight Bliss, who was her niece. The other seven relatives  surrendered their claim to the estate for the price of $100. Ms. Bliss moved into the house in 1916, and remained the owner for nearly the next 50 years.  

Susan Dwight Bliss was born in New York City on Jan. 16, 1882 to George T. Bliss and Jeanette Atwater Dwight Bliss. Her father was a member of the banking firm of Morton, Bliss & Co. Her grandfather Amos T. Dwight was a successful cotton merchant. Ms. Bliss never married and lived in her family mansion on 68th Street which was designed by Heins and LaFarge in 1906-1907.

Her father died in 1901 and her mother in 1924. Ms. Bliss was known for her philanthropy, not only in New Canaan but also in New York where she served on the Board of St. Luke’s Hospital and  made numerous donations of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the time of her death in 1966, she bequeathed approximately $2 million to Yale University for establishing professorships in epidemiology and public health as well as a scholarship in the field.

During World War I Ms. Bliss began a huge vegetable garden and according to one of her long time employees the garden was so bountiful that nine or ten men were employed to maintain it. She had the dairy house built with a white marble interior to help maintain sanitary conditions. The diary house is currently used as the “Cider House”. The property had cows, pigs, horses, dogs and cats. Ms. Bliss had a small unmarked animal cemetery that is now a wooded area on the property.

There were three greenhouses on the estate, separated into a grapery, a palm house, and a rose and chrysanthemum house. The greenhouses were located where the current herb garden and community garden area is located. The foundations from these structures can be seen today. At the end of the war, Ms. Bliss  purchased eighteen acres of meadows and woods just north of the main house that had belonged to Dr. Willard Parker, Jr.

In 1959 Ms. Bliss donated the 40 acre estate to the Town of New Canaan (an additional seven acres and 22-room wooden estate house were gifted to the First Presbyterian Church). The terms of the agreement specified that the land and buildings were to be used “for the purposes of an arboretum, bird sanctuary, nature center, horticulture and for passive recreation and related purposes, including, but without limitation, a museum site.” 

These specifications resulted in the formation of the New Canaan Nature Center Association which was formed on April 27, 1960. The Town agreed to maintain the grounds and buildings, to pay for heat and electricity, to make two buildings available to house nature center staff and to provide labor for grounds keeping and greenhouse work.

In 1961, noted conservationist, Richard H. Pough, visited the Nature Center and was photographed in front of the old greenhouse with town officials. In 1963, noted novelist and former resident, Faith Baldwin was photographed in front of the greenhouses describing her visit to the property as “a walk in the sun.”

[Part 2 of this installment of “New Canaan Now & Then” will be published in next Friday’s newsletter.]