Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for connecticut
An Iron Will in Connecticut
By Linda Tancs
The Berlin Iron Bridge Company was a Connecticut company that built iron bridges and buildings, many of which are now listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. One of the last bridges built by the company was the 1895 wrought-iron lenticular truss bridge over the Housatonic River located in Lovers Leap State Park in New Milford, Connecticut. It’s one of five remaining iron bridges in the state. Cross the bridge to Lovers Leap Trail, where a rock formation gives the park its name. According to tradition, it was there that the daughter of a Native American chief and her lover plunged to their deaths.
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A Most Unusual Lighthouse
By Linda Tancs
One of the last lighthouses built in New England, New London Ledge Lighthouse in Connecticut isn’t what you’d expect. Far from the usual conical variety, it was built in 1909 in the Second Empire style, featuring red brick, a mansard roof and granite detailing. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the house-like structure was intended to mimic the grand style of homes on the coast, at the insistence of their wealthy owners. Located at the mouth of New London Harbor, it can be reached via boat tours offered in July by Custom House Maritime Museum. Tours depart from New London Waterfront Park.
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A Rarity at Yale
By Linda Tancs
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University is one of the world’s largest libraries devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts. Just 90 minutes from New York in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, its lobby and mezzanine public exhibition areas are open to the public. That’s where you’ll find such gems as the Gutenberg Bible (the first Western book printed from movable type) and John James Audubon’s Birds of America, a series of hand-colored, life-size prints first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838. The building itself is a conversation piece. Built of Vermont marble and granite, bronze and glass, its exterior marble panels filter light so that rare materials can be displayed without damage.
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An Art Colony in Connecticut
By Linda Tancs
Overlooking the Lieutenant River, the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, is a National Historic Landmark. Once the home of a wealthy sea captain, the Late Georgian-style mansion became a boarding house under Miss Florence Griswold, hosting some of the most noted names in American Impressionism forming what became known as the Lyme Art Colony. This museum of art and history tells the story of how Connecticut played a pivotal role in fostering American artists.
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The Great Hunger
By Linda Tancs
Phytophthora infestans, the fungus that causes potato blight, invaded parts of Ireland in August, 1845. By the following year, the blight had devastated the harvest throughout the country. Heavily dependent on the crop, the resulting famine caused widespread death and poverty as well as emigration for those who could afford to do so. The Great Hunger, as it’s called, was one of the first national disasters to elicit international fundraising. The magnitude of this event is chronicled at The Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. The museum is one of many locales memorializing this tragedy in the United States. Other memorials exist in many locations throughout Ireland and also in cities around the world with large populations descended from immigrants affected by the famine.
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Tales From the Crypt
By Linda Tancs
New Haven, Connecticut was settled in 1638 by a group of Puritans. In 1812, a church was built on the Green to house their remains and those of Revolutionary War veterans. Built over part of the burying ground, Center Church on the Green sports a basement crypt with a who’s who of eternal occupants. In peaceful repose lie Benedict Arnold’s first wife, President Rutherford Hayes’ family, Reverend James Pierpont (a founder of Yale College) and Sarah Rutherford Trowbridge (marked with a stone dated 1687, the oldest one in The Crypt). Overall, The Crypt contains the identified remains of about 137 people and the unidentified remains of over 1,000 souls and marks the last remaining evidence of the city’s early settlers. Crypt tours take place April through October on Thursdays and Saturdays.
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A Wigwam in Connecticut
By Linda Tancs
Located in Washington, Connecticut, the Institute for American Indian Studies celebrates New England’s indigenous history. Open year round, the museum features a replicated Algonkian village complete with long house (the chief’s residence) and wigwams. A series of nature trails through the 15-acre property leads to the village. There are five tribes recognized by the State of Connecticut, each with a reservation: the Mashantucket Pequot, Paucatuck Eastern Pequot, Mohegan, Schaghticoke and Golden Hill Paugussett.
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The House That Witnessed History
By Linda Tancs
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991, Bush-Holley House is a saltbox in cozy Cos Cob, a Greenwich, Connecticut suburb on the north side of Long Island Sound. Initially constructed in 1728, the colonial home’s coastal vantage point provided front row views decades later to our nation’s battle for independence. Purchased in the early 1700s by Justus Bush, a wealthy farmer in Greenwich, the family operated a tide mill on the property and later added a storehouse that would become the Cos Cob post office for a time. The house passed into the Holley family, who ran it as a boarding house for artists and writers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, an art colony for impressionists flourished in Cos Cob. Serving as part of the Connecticut Art Trail, the house museum honors the area’s artistic legacy through temporary and permanent exhibitions.
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Leave It to Beaver
By Linda Tancs
Everyone knows that beavers are industrious little creatures, prolific builders of dams to protect themselves against predators such as coyotes, wolves, and bears. Although dams can be very beneficial in restoring wetlands, they can also cause property damage from flooding. So what’s a property owner to do? How about using our furry friends’ handiwork as ceiling art? That’s what you’ll find at Beaver Lodge Cottage in Winvian, Connecticut, where a re-assembled dam adorns the ceiling above the bed. A new spin on applied art, indeed.
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The Seventh Sister of Connecticut
By Linda Tancs
At Connecticut’s southernmost of hills known as the Seven Sisters, actor/director/playwright William Hooker Gillette built a twenty-four-room mansion reminiscent of a medieval castle. The fieldstone structure with a southern white oak woodwork interior is part of Gillette Castle State Park, an East Haddam treasure accessible from road or ferry. In fact, from late April to late November take the Chester-Hadlyme ferry across the Connecticut River from Chester for majestic views of the clifftop castle. The castle is open from Memorial Day to Columbus Day but the park is open year round.
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