News
High Praise for ‘Respectful’ Renovation and Expansion at Hoyt and Main
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A newly renovated house on a prominent Main Street corner is earning high praise for its preservation of the original 1903 structure that stands there and consideration for the neighborhood’s streetscape, as well as a respectful expansion that a series of prior owners had failed to execute, experts say. The recently completed alterations at 224 Main St. follow a stripping-off of additions and siding to get to an original “skeleton of the house” that was retained and then expanded on “in a way that looks as though they grew it over the past 100 years, like a natural progression of architecture, and that’s fantastic,” said New Canaan resident Martin Skrelunas, an architecture and landscape preservationist. “The parts that the developer tore off were themselves very insensitive, they had no relationship to the antique house or the neighborhood,” Skrelunas continued. “What I would say they’ve done—and I hate using these words because they’re not easy to translate—but they’re respecting the original building and ‘maintaining the hierarchy.’ So the antique portion of the house is the most important and largest in this case, and as each new function was designed and built, it recedes a little bit.