Around Town

Despite Warnings, Unwanted Garbage Enclosure Lingers within Historic District

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The group of volunteers that oversees New Canaan’s historic district—a 21-building area around God’s Acre—say they intend, reluctantly, to assess a violation or fine for a Seminary Street resident who never got permission to set up a garbage can enclosure located in the driveway and has failed to communicate or comply with requests to do so. The Historic District Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to empower its acting chairman to contact the town’s lawyer and building department regarding 18 Seminary St. “I had previously been told that it would be changed in location and taken down from that place by the 15th of May,” Janet Lindstrom said of the plastic enclosure. Before structures within the district undergo exterior changes, approval is required from the commission. The relevant section of the Town Code is Chapter 31-6, which includes this language:
“No work on any type of structure which would change the appearance of any property within the Historic District when viewed from the street line shall be begun until the property owner has filed an application with the Building Inspector and has received a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic District Commission.”
The two-story house at 18 Seminary St.

Around Town

God’s Acre Gets a New Evergreen Tree for Christmas Caroling

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New Canaan resident Scott Gress lost 14 of the 80-foot pine trees on his property when Superstorm Sandy struck two years ago. Shortly after, it occurred to Gress while driving past God’s Acre that if the iconic fir tree there came down, there’d be no centerpiece for one defining community event for New Canaanites: Christmas Eve caroling. Gress said he identifies New Canaan strongly with the annual Dec. 24 gathering on the sloping green in front of the Congregational Church. “There’s no question about it.

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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.