Around Town

Podcast: Researching Slavery in New Canaan

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Nancy Geary, executive director of the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society, about a research project into the history of enslaved and free black people in New Canaan. Thanks to a grant from the New Canaan Community Foundation, the Historical Society will bring in a researcher and exhibition developer to help create a show for display this coming winter. We talk to Nancy about the research project’s origins, what has turned up so far and what you our listeners may do to help the Historical Society as it gathers up relevant information, photographs and artifacts. 

Located at 13 Oenoke Ridge, the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society can be reached at 203-966-1776 and info@nchistory.org. 

Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Government

Historical Society Plans To Install New Brick Walkways

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The oldest historical society in Fairfield County is seeking permission from an appointed town body to install new brick walkways connecting buildings on its Oenoke Ridge campus with each other as well as a planned new terrace. The New Canaan Museum & Historical Society has applied to the Historic District Commission for permission to install a “brick pathway to connect the historic museums–the Rock School and the Hanford-Silliman house—with the existing path to the Rogers Studio.”

“There is also a 20-by-20-foot terrace at the top of the hill, which will have some benches for visitors to use,” according to the organization’s Feb. 22 application for a Certificate of Appropriateness. “The idea is to integrate the campus and provide a better outdoor experience. The plan was designed by Keith Simpson and will work visually with the approved terrace by the main building.”

The Commission is scheduled to take up the application at its regular meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday.

Carl Rothbart

Historical Society Seeks Approval for Cedar- and Asphalt-Shingle Roof Project

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The volunteer body that oversees New Canaan’s Historic District is poised to approve a request from an organization located on God’s Acre to replace cedar shingles on part of a building there with asphalt shingles. The New Canaan Museum and Historical Society is seeking to replace keep the shingles on its 1825 “Town House” building facing Oenoke Ridge as cedar, but to use asphalt shingles for the roof of a 2000 addition that houses the Lindstrom conference room, officials said. “We have a number of leaks,” the organization’s executive director, Nancy Geary, told members of the Historic District Commission at their July 23 meeting, held via videoconference. 

“One of the problems that we have is under roof of Lindstrom Room as part of of the library roof is where we store our extensive clothing and textile collection,” she said. “So we are very worried about water damage in there. It’s already leaking in the attic extensively.