New Canaan Now & Then: ‘The Gingerbread House’

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

The gingerbread house on Ponus Ridge was originally purchased from the Sears Catalog and built in 1932. 

The property had belonged to the Hayo family as early as 1909. In 1913, Charles Hayo, who worked as a farmer, had a telephone installed at their property. In November 1914 it was reported that Mr. Hayo had broken ground and was building a new home north of his existing home on the property which the family moved into in 1915. In July 1933 the property was owned by Emily M. Hayo. 

Ms. Hayo was born on Feb. 3, 1890 and died in November 1968 in Florida. She had been a resident of New Canaan for 60 years before she died. She was the daughter of Matilda (also spelled ‘Mathilde’) Emily Bayersdorfer, (1867-1933), who was born in Switzerland, and Charles M. Hayo (1869-1956), who was originally from Hamburg ,Germany.  In addition to Emily, the Hayos  had two sons—Gustave and Charles (the oral history reports he went by Carl). The Hayo cousins, the Reinholt family, visited their family in New Canaan before they moved from New York City. 

According to the transcription of an oral history in the possession of the NCHS&M of Anna [Ann] Reinholt Eberhardt, her family home at 25 Weed St. was built by Bob VanName who was married to Jen DeForest. The DeForests were a large family in town and lived on Knapp Road. Esther DeForest Knapp lived further down on Knapp Lane and her parents lived on the corner of Weed and Knapp Road. Nellie DeForest Brower lived between the two and their other sister, Trudy, lived on Hoyt Street closer to Darien. 

Anna Reinholt was born in Norwalk Hospital on January 31, 1935. Her grandfather, John Bayersdorfer was from Bern, Switzerland and moved to the United States after WWI. Her mother was Pauline Mary Bayersdorfer. George Alvin Reinholt (1907-1996) had four children.  When their mother died, her sister, Pauline, came to help care for their children and eventually married George.  

In 1913 Miss Emily Hayo participated in an event at the Ponus Ridge Chapel where she and others were dressed as “belles.” Miss Haayo posed as Queen Elizabeth in long robes; others were dressed as an Indian maid, a Puritan belle and Queen Louise of Prussia. 

In March 1914, Gustav Hayo married Sarah Emily Avery and they lived on Ponus Ridge. Sadly, Sarah  died in August 1930 at the age of 33. Her brother Charles Jr. worked for a local merchant, D.H. Wyckoff in Springdale. Before her death, the Hayos enjoyed many family gatherings at their home on Ponus Street with relatives from nearby Stamford, Brooklyn and New York.

Emily Hayo owned the property on Ponus Ridge until she sold it to Frederick and Dorothy Brush in May 1968 for $25,000. Mr. Brush was an interior designer and transformed the nondescript Depression era house into its current gingerbread house creation with extensive Victorian moldings and stained glass.  Dorothy Brush was famous for making actual gingerbread houses.  In 1974, she won $500 for the first prize in Ladies Home Journal Christmas food competition with her Snow-man-in-the-box gingerbread creation. Dorothy grew up in Springdale and enrolled at the Art Career School in New York City after graduating high school. She met her husband when they both worked at Norcross in Stamford. 

When the property was sold in 2015 at the cost of $824,000 to its current owners the real estate listing stated that the present owner had started many of the interior projects that were never completed. The listing also detailed that the home had three fireplaces, a coffered ceiling in the dining room, cathedral ceilings in the primary bedroom and hand painted hardwood floors.