‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz.
Silver Hill Hospital does extraordinary work in treating all who suffer from addiction and psychiatric disorders. And it has a fascinating history.
Founded by John Millet in 1931, it started as the Silver Hill Inn, a place to help patients described as “nervous, depressed, anxious, or malingering.” Beginning in 1971, focus was placed on building the hospital’s substance abuse program. By 1984, that program was staffed by a psychiatrist, an associate psychiatrist, a psychologist, substance abuse counselors, nursing staff, and a recreational and occupational therapist. In 1985, the hospital added an acute care unit.
In 2012, the Chronic Pain and Recovery Center program launched. And in 2015, Silver Hill started both an eating disorder program for adults and an outpatient opioid addiction program.
The historic architecture is wonderful. The facilities sit on 44 acres and the buildings include former family homes acquired by the hospital’s board over time—the Scavetta House, now a men’s residential facility, and the Klingenstein House, a former 1920’s guest house that now houses the Adolescent Transitional Living Program.
The Datchet House, now called the River House, located at 143 Valley Road has the most interesting history. The 1913 Tudor style home was designed for Silvermine artist D. Putnam Brinley by his friend and neighbor, the architect Austin W. Lord, a principal at Lord and Hewitt Architects in New York and a former Dean of Columbia University’s School of Architecture and Design.
Gordon Brinley, D. Putnam’s wife explains this history in an article she wrote for the December 1918 edition of “The House Beautiful.” The first Datchet House belonged to Thomas Brinley, auditor to both King Charles I and King Charles II. It was built in 1640 in the Town of Datchet near Windsor Castle. For his exceptional service and loyalty, Thomas was granted 10,000 acres of land in “Rhode Island of the New World.” He never saw this extensive land grant, but his son, Francis, claimed it in 1723. Francis Brinley then built himself a “Datchet house” suggestive of the one he’d left in England.
Putnam Brinley built this third Datchet House on Valley Road in New Canaan. He purchased the land from the family of Darius St. John, who had bought it from the Native Americans in 1740. As Gordon describes, “On the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, 1913, a little company of friends gathered in a cleared space on a wooded knoll, the chosen site; and each turned a shovelful of earth and all drank to happiness in a dwelling-place of love. On June the twenty-eighth, 1914, love took possession of Datchet House. The fabric of dreams stood, a rain-proof reality.”
Silver Hill purchased the house in 1945. It was restored on its 100th anniversary in 2013 by New Haven architect Richard Turlington. For this restoration, it received an award from the New Canaan Preservation Alliance.