April Whitman Bailey Selection: Artist's View from Foot of Strawberry Hill

Download complete newspaper clipping of April 2, 1927

The Advocate writes:

[...]  The great Elms of New Haven and Hartford are still vivid in our memory and one can recall numerous other Connecticut towns that can boast of these typical New England Streets.

One of the many charms of Stamford is that she still has just such streets in her residential sections, and Mr. Bailey has chosen for today’s pictorial subjects a scene looking down Prospect Street from the foot of Strawberry Hill, a section most familiar to us all.

This certainly is no longer true today.  Prospect Street has been largely transformed into a business district.  One of the greatest losses, it seems, is the Christian Science Church, seen below in an undated postcard.

The Stamford church was recognized as a worldwide branch of the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston on Christmas Eve 1906.  Construction of the building was completed in 1912, and the church was dedicated, according to church policy, in 1921, when it was free of debt.  The congregation remained at 100 Prospect Street for 50 years until it moved to to a new church building on Stillwater Road at the corner of of Bridge Street.

Map

(Reference file: Bailey 312.jpg)
Whitman Bailey Collection

We add the usual warning: "At times, the accompanying vignettes are mostly folklore passed on to Mr. Bailey by residents of the areas where he was sketching.  In those instances he had no way of determining the truth of the story.  Nor have we.  It is presented as a sidelight to the sketch.  Therefore, researchers are cautioned to regard these tales as local color, interesting, thought provoking, but sometimes not entirely factual."  (Although in the above case, the text was written by an editor of The Advocate, not Mr. Bailey himself.)