Welcome to your bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more!
Spring 2022 / Preserving Historic Craftsmanship
Spring is here and we’re celebrating craftsmanship in historic preservation. Thanks to support for this issue from the State Historic Preservation Office with funds from the Community Investment Act of the State of Connecticut.
The Intense Light of Stamford’s First Presbyterian Church
Preservationist Wes Haynes recalls as a boy watching the now-iconic First Presbyterian Church in Stamford as it was being built in 1958. “The strange shape of this groundbreaking construction bewildered many I knew,” he writes in the Spring 2022 issue. “It was the topic of my family’s and friends’ kitchen-table discussions, and my father took me to the site to watch the panels being hoisted in place.”
The congregation had planned to rebuild a traditional, iconic, New England church after it was forced to leave its site in downtown Stamford in 1952. How the building committee ended up selecting Modern architect Wallace K. Harrison, who had never designed a church, and how the innovative construction came to be realized, is the subject of Haynes’ fascinating story.
“Harrison found inspiration … in Paris while bathing in the intense blue light of St. Chappelle’s stained glass. His first and only church would be designed from the inside out,” Haynes writes.
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In her stunning Spring issue photo essay, Mary Donohue also evokes the power of childhood memories. “When I was a tiny child sitting in hard oak church pews on Sunday mornings,” she recalls, “I could always get lost looking up at the ceiling covered in gold stars against a dark night sky or the light reflecting from the gold-leaf halos of the saints painted on the walls around the sanctuary. Closer inspection, though, revealed simple plaster column capitals made to look like the finest Italian marble and flat plaster walls painted to look like the most expensive limestone.”
Donohue goes on to explain that “though materials may be modest, many highly-skilled techniques are required to accurately restore historic interior finishes… .”
She showcases five gorgeous Victorian buildings—leading off with the State Capitol—that have been rescued from misguided redecoration and the ravages of time and restored to their former glory. From Hartford, to New Haven, Waterbury and Norwich, see before, after, and work-in-progress photos by John Canning & Co, awarded the 2021 Janet Jainschigg Award for Preservation Professionals by the Preservation Connecticut in this issue’s story.
Read the entire story with your print subscription. (Subscribe at CTExplored.org/Shop.)
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The Latest from Grating the Nutmeg
137. An American Woman Artist Abroad — Mary Rogers Williams
March is Women’s History Month and in this episode publisher Elizabeth Normen talks with author Eve Kahn about her 2019 book, Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Wiliams, 1857 - 1907 (Wesleyan University Press, 2019). It’s a rare inside view of the challenges women artists faced in the late 19th century. Kahn drew from a collection of Williams’s gossipy letters home in which she describes her desperation to escape her teaching job at Smith College to paint and travel abroad. Hear how Williams talked her way into artist James McNeil Whistler’s London home, and about drawing from a cadaver at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
Read Kahn’s story in the Winter 2021-2022 issue “Mary Rogers Williams: We Shall Want to Do A Lot of Rambling.”
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
Hill-Stead Celebrates 75
Turning 75 in 2022, Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington plans to go all out! It will celebrate its founder’s birthday in early February; on March 27, the inaugural Art of Shearing: A Sheep to Shawl Festival, explores transforming raw wool—from its resident sheep!—into wearable garments; May brings the perennial favorite, May Market, and a diamond anniversary gala like no other. Find out more at Hillstead.org.
Hill-Stead Museum, Hillstead.org
Performance Lectures Return
The Friends of Wood Memorial Library in South Windsor happily announce the return of the library’s performance lecture series. This spring meet Martha Washington (March 23), Lizzie Borden (April 27), and Diana of Love (June 10), portrayed by actors Maggie Worsdale, Lynne Moulton, and Judith Kalaora, respectively. Register at WoodMemorialLibrary.org.
Wood Memorial Library & Museum, Woodmemoriallibrary.org
Sculpture Honors Suffragists
In March Hartford Public Library will unveil a sculpture by Greater Hartford artist Marilyn Parkinson, who is creating a three-dimensional dress depicting the popular design of the early 19th-century women’s suffrage era. The piece marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 and honors the many Hartford women who, despite barriers, registered to vote in the city in October 1920. Funding for the commission was provided by the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, and the sculpture will be located in the Hartford History Center at the downtown library branch.
Hartford Public Library, hplct.org
[Her]Story: Women's Roles Through History
Through May 5, Pequot Library in Southport presents [Her]Story: Women's Roles Through History, an exhibition about the evolution of the roles of women in society from the 1700s forward. Selected items from the library’s Special Collections reveal the impressive accomplishments of women over time, highlighting local and national figures such as Ella Grasso, Mabel Osgood Wright, and Amelia Earhart. Join Pequot Library for a walk through Colonial America, the Gilded Age, the Women’s Suffrage movement, employment in World War I and II, all the way up to modern life.
Pequot Library, Pequotlibrary.org
Artists and Friends
Two For the Road: Ernest Roth and Andre Smith in Europe is a special exhibition on view at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, March 20 to May 15. Two For the Road tells the story of Ernest David Roth (1879 – 1964) and Jules André Smith (1880 – 1959), two American printmakers who were friends for 50 years. The multiple sketching trips to Europe they made between 1913 and 1930 attest to their close fellowship. This exhibition includes more than 100 prints, 17 sketches, and two etched plates that track their travels throughout Europe. Prints by their friend John Taylor Arms will also be on view.
Mattatuck Museum, mattmuseum.org
Editors’ Picks
Stories we love from back issues to read now.
“Tiffany’s Stunning Church Windows,” Fall 2021
“An Early 20th Century Reflection of the Inner Workings of an Old New England Congregational Meetinghouse,” Summer 2005
“Hill-Stead: A Colonial Revival Performance,” Fall 2002
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