News

VIDEO: Construction Crew Needs Jackhammer to Clear Frozen Snow in New Canaan

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via YouTube

It’s been so cold in New Canaan since consecutive snowstorms walloped the town that the crew clearing the area outside the former Post Office building is using a jackhammer to crack the mountain of frozen snow outside (see video). Motorists pulling up to the light where Park Street hits Cherry and Pine watched from the comfort of warm SUVs as these guys jack-hammered away at the pile and shoveled the frozen pieces away. The space long occupied by the Post Office—itself relocated at least for now at 90 Main St. (which is causing its own difficulties with traffic and parking)—will see a Mrs. Green’s Natural Market go in. It isn’t clear just when it will open.

Around Town

Are Cars Speeding into the S-Curve on White Oak Shade [VIDEO]?

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via YouTube

 [Note: This video was taken on Monday, March 3, 2014.]

Prompted by a speed complaint, town officials are looking into whether motorists are driving too fast into the sharp S-curve on White Oak Shade Road. The curve jags left and then right between Overlook Drive and Putnam Road for motorists traveling south on White Oak Shade. The town likely will start by using sentries to collect data about motorists’ speeds there, according to Tiger Mann, the town’s senior engineer and assistant director of the New Canaan Department of Public Works. In the past, the town has installed “rumble strips” in the roadway there to slow motorists and the approach worked, Mann said. The strips serve as small bumps for cars traveling over them and cause motorists to slow down before entering the S-curve, he said.

Around Town

New Canaan Week in Review: Post Office Parking, Our ‘Classic’ Style

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While the town braces for yet another snowstorm, we’re taking a look back at the week that was in New Canaan. Town Talker
Readers are contacting us to say that there’s wide concern over the Post Office’s new location at 90 Main St. and what is perceived as a lack of effort to find a better space. Parking officials in town, following a decision to introduce three 15-minute parking spaces in front of the building (which at times also is a loading zone), say they’re seeing frequent double-parking. NewCanaanite.com will follow up with the post office next week for an update on the status of their search for a permanent location in town.

Now & Then

9-6-6-Story: The Many Changes of New Canaan’s Exchanges

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New Canaanites today see residents on cellphones everywhere, driving up Ponus Ridge (hopefully not doing this) or walking along the sidewalks of Elm and Main. For people such as Cookie King, née Van Beck—who lived in New Canaan from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and whose family lived in New Canaan until 1995—that’s about as impersonal as the way individual cell numbers are assigned: Between IP technology and mobile provider pool applications, there’s no rhyme or reason to a New Canaan “extension.” “We still have a landline and won’t give it up,” King told NewCanaanite.com “Have phone on the wall with a dial on it too.”

Many New Canaanites remember the days even before “966” was the town’s main designated exchange, and a look at our local telephone history tells the story of those three digits, long associated with the Next Station to Heaven. The first telephones in New Canaan were installed in 1881, as four businesses in the then-small town—Henry B. Rogers & Co., Hoyt’s Nurseries, Monroe’s drug store and Johnson’s carriage works—were part of the Norwalk exchange. After the turn of the century, New Canaan’s population began growing rapidly—as did the number of phones in town.