Around Town

Looking Back at Our Town: New Canaan in 1927

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An estimated 200 residents filed into the Lamb Room at New Canaan Library on Monday night for a presentation led by NewCanaanite.com contributing editor Terry Dinan, on New Canaan in 1927. New Canaan Library’s selection of “One Summer: America 1927” for a community-wide reading initiative will culminate this week with Wednesday’s speakeasy in the same Lamb Room and Saturday’s original play at the Powerhouse Theater. Terry, who writes the news site’s popular “0684-Old” local history feature, walked the crowd through a rapidly changing time in New Canaan’s history. The 1920’s saw New Canaan’s population jump by 40 percent, and important pieces of the town’s downtown and landscape took shape in the period. In 1927 itself, both Karl Chevrolet and New Canaan High School were founded, and the town marked locally much of what Bryson chronicled in his book, including Babe Ruth’s 60-home run feat and Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight.

News

Well-Loved New Canaanites Recalled at Peter M. Deane Fitness Center Rededication

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New Canaan resident Pete Deane, Jr. remembers a saying his late father had: “You make a living by what you earn. You make a life by what you give.”

As his friends and family recall, the late Peter Deane—a 1959 New Canaan High School graduate and standout athlete who long oversaw the family business, Kitchens by Deane, and died suddenly in 1990—gave back to the community in scores of ways, by connecting with and helping people from all backgrounds, through nonprofit organizations and a gregarious natural instinct. On Saturday morning, Deane’s family gathered with a handful of his closest friends and fellow NCHS ’59 grads and their families, for the rededication of the NCHS fitness center named for him. Created in Deane’s memory through donations to our All Sports Booster Club (est. 1976)—mostly recently with a generous gift from the Dauk family of New Canaan—the center ranks among the very best in the state.