Stamford History Real Time

Whitman Bailey Selection for September Toms House contains relics of early Stamford

Whitman Bailey obviously loved the Cove area, we have many of his sketches in our collection.  Here is the side view of Toms House at 319 Weed Avenue, as of September 1954.  Current online property records indicate that the house was built in 1843.  As of the 1977/79 Historic Houses Survey and the April 1979 record, the property belonged to to the William Dippel estate and, "The house has remained in the same family since its construction and has had the fewest alterations of any in this row of mid-19th century cottages which housed employees of the nearby Cove Mills."

Download Newspaper Clipping of September 4, 1954

September Photo Selection of the Month Barbershops of the Past

This nice selection from the "Business Enterprises" section of our photo collection was chosen by our summer volunteer, Elizabeth Packer:

Barbershops in Stamford

There is one mystery though:  two photos are labeled "Carmine Cerrata Barbershop."  However, we can't find any listing in the city directories, nor do census pages help.  The second and later photo gives the street address of the Davenport Hotel on West Park Place.  Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

How I spent my summer vacation

Volunteer coordinator Jane Flounders writes in our newsletter Stamford Pioneer, Fall 2009:

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

First came Amanda Bucci, a sophomore at Eastern Connecticut State University. She told us she was hoping to major in Museum Sciences. She wasn’t able to find a job this summer, so she was interested in volunteering with us. Tom Zoubek immediately put her to work as the lead worker on our long hoped for inventory. Amanda sorted, cleaned, noted, measured, cross referenced, hand lettered accession numbers and compiled inventory records for items in our porcelain, toy, arms, baskets, boxes and small silver pieces. Her summer began to take on a feel of a personal seminar in curatorial tasks. Subsequently, she went to work polishing chairs and tables as well as correcting curatorial notes for these collections.

The shortage of summer employment opportunities soon brought Caroline Johnson, Colgate 2011, to us. She began working in the chair room, which had been cleaned of the heavy dirt and dust by Alex Zavoluk’s Boy Scout team. Ronnie Minkoff joined Caroline right after her graduation from West Hill High School. The two became our chair experts. They were later joined by Amanda, and together they cleaned, measured, checked accession numbers and matched records for our collection of wood chairs. They even moved on to work on the furniture in the table and mirror room.

The Library staff at work

Librarian Ron Marcus has returned from his medical leave, and the volunteers in the Marcus Research Library have done quite a bit of cataloging and updating over the summer. 

Books have been moved downstairs and will soon grace the library shelves, being swapped for items of curatorial interest only, which will be stored upstairs.  Anne Case is making progress in adding books and pamphlets to the online catalog of the Ferguson Library.  The Vertical Files have been updated, necessitating a revision of the corresponding web pages.  Work on the Inventoried Collection is ongoing – an index will be online soon.  More Whitman Bailey clippings have been unearthed and are being added to the Whitman Bailey Collection, and major work has been done on Bailey's original sketches – more on this in a later post, as well as on a collection of obituaries.  Eileen Sharkey is hard at work transferring veterans' oral history interviews connected with our recent WWII exhibit onto modern media.  The staff is also assisting Executive Director Tom Zoubek's work on the upcoming exhibit, 100 Years in the Making: Highlights from the Society's Collections.

Our thanks to the above, as well as to Grace Bounty, Dorothy Mix, and our student volunteers, current and recent.

Meanwhile, Irene Hahn and Richard Teasdale are hard at work revising the website and bringing it in the 21st century.  Stay tuned …

Chief Historian Emeritus, National Park Service, Edwin C. Bearss to speak Thursday night in Stamford

Please mark your calendar!

The Civil War Round Table of Fairfield County is hosting Edwin Bearss at its monthly meeting at the Stamford Historical Society headquarters at 1508 High Ridge Road, Thursday, September 17, at 7:30 PM.  Admission is free.

Mr. Bearss' talk is titled

The Defense of Little Round Top:
A New Interpretation

How important was this terrain in averting Union disaster on the Second Day, and does Joshua Chamberlain deserve the fawning credit heaped upon him for its successful defense? Ed will challenge the conventional view of this pivotal action. Get set for the controversy!

More on Mr. Bearss

Newsletter Stamford Pioneer, Fall 2009 Edition

The Fall 2009 edition of our newsletter, Stamford Pioneer, is available online now.

The Look of Stamford a Century Ago
East Main Street from Atlantic Square, 1909

Download Stamford Pioneer, Fall 2009 (PDF)

Learn about the 100th Anniversary of Society’s Incorporation, related celebrations, and a new exhibit.  Read "How I Spent My Summer Vacation," discover the result of the "Cozy Sundays" survey, and more.

The Stamford House Hotel

The old Stamford House hotel on Main Street was originally named the Stage House in the days of the stagecoach.  It was built at the end of the eighteenth century as a private residence, and it opened as a hotel in the early 1800's.  The Stamford House was one of the leading hotels during the 1800's.



The Stamford House was located on East Main Street at the corner of Stage Street on the block between the canal (later Canal Street) and Pacific Street.  Main Street near Atlantic Square was the hub of downtown Stamford in the 19th century.  Main Street was also known as the Connecticut Turnpike and was part of the Boston Post Road which connected the major ports of the northeast.

The above text is from a record group which The Stamford Historical Society maintains in its Research Library,  The Stamford House Register (1865-1869) – RG15, and which contains quite a bit of ancillary information. There is also a page in Picturesque Stamford 1892, Hotels.  The pole in the center front of the above photo advertizes that the hotel maintained a barber shop.  It also had a cobbler, a tailor and a hat shop.

The hotel was razed in 1916, but the guests moved right into the just completed Davenport Hotel on West Park Place.  Later, as Urban Renewal photos show, the Davenport had been renamed Stamford House.

A Promotional Description of the Stamford House Hotel, undated.

Urban Renewal Map – Stage Street can be found at Block 25, from Main to Canal streets;  it's now "underneath" the Stamford Town Center.  A recent Photo Selection of the Month, Postcards: Hotels in Stamford, March 2009.