Remembering Strickland Road - Celebrating America's 250th

 

The Waring House, home of Harry Lounsbury, circa 1930. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society

By Mary A. Jacobson

Lincoln Steffens, a summer resident of Cos Cob in the early twentieth century, described Cos Cob in his book The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens as “a little old fishing village strung along one side of one long street facing Cos Cob Harbor… It was a paintable spot frequented by artists who worked, painters who actually painted… by writers who wrote… by editors and publishers. It was an ‘art colony.’ We talked art.”

Harry Lounsbury was raised in Cos Cob, in the Waring House at 30 Strickland Road, built by Captain James Waring in 1749. The home was purchased by his grandparents, Frank and Kate Livingston Seymour, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Their daughter and Harry’s mother, Margaret Seymour Lounsbury, returned to live there with her infant Harry in 1918, after the unfortunate death of her husband from the Spanish flu. Harry was interviewed by OHP volunteer Gertrude Reinhart in 1975.

View of Lower Landing of Cos Cob with Toby’s Tavern on left and post office on right, circa 1900. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society.

As Harry related, “This was an art colony frequented by all types of intellectuals… writers, poets, artists.” A significant home in the area was the Bush-Holley House, dating from 1730, at 39 Strickland Road (now a centerpiece of the Greenwich Historical Society and a National Historic Landmark). A center of the Cos Cob Art Colony, it was operated “as a boarding house for artists and writers beginning in 1882 and was run by Constant Holley MacRae and her husband, Elmer Livingston MacRae… She always had ‘paying guests’… The house was very well known throughout the last century for the people who summered there… Willa Cather came here… Childe Hassam, the artist, stayed there.” Family lore included the story of Hassam’s painting of Harry’s mother as a child in front of the Waring house. “I guess she badgered the daylights out of him and finally he put her in the picture.”

As a young boy growing up in Cos Cob, Harry had vivid summertime memories of the iceman arriving in a horse-pulled wagon, lugging a 50-pound block of ice into the wooden refrigerator. “All the kids would gather around, and he would chop off some ice and hand it to us” – a treat for a child to savor on a hot summer’s day. Wintertime scenes included the delivery of milk by horse-drawn sleigh from Round Hill Farms dairy. The horse was very well trained. The milkman never used to have to tell him where to stop; he knew exactly what stops to make.”

The Great Depression of 1929 “hit us. My mother was a teacher, and my grandfather lost his job with the New York World.” In those difficult times, Harry remembered the kindnesses of Michael and Fanny Taylor, who owned the dry goods store located in the Hub, the small central shopping area of Cos Cob. “Mrs. Taylor could always find a piece of clothing in the back of the dry goods store that… she’d sell to my mother for twenty-six cents. She was that kind of person… the kind that couldn’t do enough for everybody else around them.”

Harry Lounsbury also recalled the summers he worked as a teen at Palmer Brothers Engines, Inc. on River Road. “I worked in the machine shop, chipping excess metal off of engine blocks when it came out of the foundry. I can remember they had unbelievable heat in that foundry.” Harry would report to work at seven in the morning, leaving at six o’clock at night. “I used to just get enough time to run home to the house around the pond and get a fast lunch, and right back again…The hours that they work today are not the hours they worked in the early thirties, I can assure you.” According to Harry, the Palmer engine factory “put out some of the finest marine engines for fishing boats that were ever built.”

 

In those days, the view on the water side of Strickland Road, “was nothing but salt marsh, wetlands; and there would be these long ramps set on pilings going out to deep water on the Mianus River. People would moor their boats and that’s where they’d spend their summer nights when it was hot.” Across the street from 43 Strickland Road, there was a coal yard “where the Thruway goes now… Big four-masted coal schooners would come up and moor along the wall.” As for Mill Pond, it “was always silted in. I can remember when it was a lot deeper than it is now, much deeper… It was deep enough so that tugboats were able to get up to the bridge with their barges… You could hear the drawbridge open up (the railroad bridge at that time) and pretty soon you’d hear the tugboat chugging up the river.”

Bush-Holley House, circa 1900. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society.

The surprising and destructive Hurricane of September 21, 1938, was devastating. “The hurricane hit here as the tide was rising, which couldn’t have been worse… The water was so high that it was coming over the railing of that bridge over there, just pouring like Niagara over that railing into the pond… We were completely marooned here for quite some time… The only way you could get to the Hub (business district) was by boat. All the stores were flooded out, trees gone.”

The Thruway construction of Interstate 95 occurred in the years 1956-1958. From Harry’s viewpoint, that project “just cut this place to pieces… A succession of houses right down the street are all gone now to make way for the Thruway… The other side of River Road has all changed since the Thruway went through.” Harry recounted one family’s house after another that was removed. Before the Thruway was built, “you’d always find people sitting on the stone wall dipping a hook when the tide was in or going out fishing and crabbing.” Family names of this tight community that Harry recalled included Brush, Ferris, Poucher, Kenyon, Funke, Lockwood, Geiser, Smith, Palmer, Kane, Booth, Sperco, Seitz, Chase, Burke, Hirschberg, Hatheway, and Warren, among others.

Harry Lounsbury was a proud member of the Greatest Generation who served his country during World War II. “I left town when I was twenty-one to go into the Army. I went in the day after Pearl Harbor… I put in five years, two years of it in the Pacific. I was an engineering officer in a bomb squadron in the Army Air Corps… From that time on, my life here in this part of town ended, because I never came back to the house (on Strickland Road). My grandfather died in 1942, and the house was sold.”

The Oral History Project is proud to present blogs derived from its collection of recorded interviews. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Interviews may also be read in their entirety or checked out at the main library. Our narrators’ recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Daniel Barrett and the Art of Teaching - Celebrating America's 250th

by Mary A. Jacobson

ABOVE: Daniel Barrett and students collecting a plankton tow in Long Island Sound. Courtesy of Daniel Barrett.

 

What makes a good teacher? Every September, thoughts of school and books and teachers and assignments come to mind to people of all ages. Some are young and anticipatory of the beginning of a new year; others are older and nostalgic for teachers of a bygone time.

This September, it seems fitting to highlight an unforgettable science teacher of Greenwich High School, Daniel V. Barrett, who was interviewed by Oral History Project volunteer Marian Phillips in 2007. His love of his pupils and his dedication to teaching were apparent in his interview. In addition, his ability to make hard work and constant inquiry “fun” are a testament to his mastery of the art of teaching.

It was the year 1958 when Daniel Barrett came to the “old” Greenwich High School (now Town Hall) to apply for a science position. “That was an interesting experience.” Barrett was brought to Charlie Wilcox’s biology classroom by Andrew Bella, GHS principal, who said, “Charlie, here’s someone who’s interested in teaching at Greenwich High.” Wilcox asked Barrett what he was learning at the time; Barrett replied, “the female reproductive system.” Wilcox responded, “Well, teach it. Why don’t you tell the class all about it.” As the half-hour lesson concluded, the bell rang. Barrett recalled, “It was perfect timing. The kids left and Wilcox said, ‘Come with me.’ We went down to see Bella and he said, ‘Andy, hire him!’… It was an on-the-spot interview, and an experience under fire, and I was hired. I’ve never forgotten.” Thus began a career of thirty-eight years at GHS.

The fall of 1958 marked one year after Russia launched the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957. It orbited for three months, circling the Earth 1,440 times. The successful launch of Sputnik sparked new efforts on the part of the United States to encourage the enrichment of science education with more novel approaches. Barrett was selected to test one of the new curriculums emphasizing ecology and field studies.

Barrett and Principal Bella formed a weekly early-morning breakfast seminar with about twenty highly motivated science students. Each week, noted scientists would come “talking about science and how you get into science.” Barrett also began a twice-weekly marine biology seminar. Ever the experimental teacher, Barrett recognized the importance of field study. “My whole concept had to do with hands-on, after you would study it from a cerebral point of view.” A favorite trip was to the Fulton Fish Market. “It was a whole experience of knowing about fish, and their requirements in the ocean… on how you sell fish and keep it fresh. Then we’d bring it back and how you prepare fish, and then you’d enjoy it.” It helped that Barrett had two ovens in his classroom.

“We needed equipment and we needed a little boat which, of course, wasn’t fitting into our budget.” An unknown community “angel” was happy to supply one. “I’ve never found out who the angel was.” However, that initial investment eventually led to the formation of the Educational Oceanographic Foundation in 1967, “a tax-exempt group that can raise money, allow people to donate, and support the marine program.” Donations included boats which could be used or sold for funds for equipment and scholarships in the marine-related sciences. In addition, “We’ve had speakers and we’ve helped the school take field trips.”

At one point, the science and physical education departments were able to procure a van which enabled Barrett to take students to Greenwich Point for field studies. “My lab at that time ended up at the Queen Anne Building (now the Floren Family Environmental Center).” The building was “an old civil defense tower where people used to look for airplanes during the war. So that became my lab to put equipment in.” The Educational Oceanographic Foundation helped by installing sinks and a heating element for the winter. “We would do studies in the water with hip boots and run in and warm up in the building.” After a few years, Barrett “was able to get permission to use the upper level of the Chimes Building. For a number of years that was our next lab.”

How, might you wonder, could a high school schedule enable the kind of laboratory experiences that Barrett provided? “In the 1970s, I was able to get my morning classes to meet for double periods, two hours at a time… because you can’t function under a forty-five minute class and do what I used to do… I had a van; I had a lab at the beach; and I had two hours. It took a while for the town and curriculum development to give me that.” On occasion, when studying beaches, sand structure, groins and jetties, longer field trips of a day or two were required. “We’d look at maybe six beaches. I’d go all the way down to Lighthouse Point at New Haven, Hammonassett Beach, beaches in Rhode Island, and what the towns in each beach were doing or could be doing.”

Students kept journals in which they analyzed what they had experienced.

Towards the end of each year, Barrett devised a project that required the removal of all the furniture from the classroom. “I would mark off big four-foot squares on the floor… and we would form teams. I would in a hat pick the teams. And each team had to design a beach community.” Then, probably to the dismay of the school custodians, buckets of sand would be brought in along with “little grasses. Everything in miniature. They had to build groins, jetties, boardwalks.” When the student teams were finished designing their beachfront communities and meeting the required criteria, “they would have to stand up, and we’d all gather around their community, and they have to defend it and, of course, everyone would argue and say, ‘Well, that wouldn’t work.’ And we’d go to the next community” and analyze that one. Barrett would videotape it. “I still have some of those videotapes.” Barrett was quick to confirm that “when we were all done, we put everything away, swept up the (linoleum) floor, and brought the furniture back in.”

To summarize his view of his profession, Barrett stated, “I loved teaching. I loved it. I had great students… In the school setting, I found I had lots of support to get out in the wild and do things. I’ve always felt hands-on, feeling, smelling, walking in a marsh, smelling the sulfur… That’s where my strength came, to get students to dig in. And touch it.”

The Oral History Project is proud to present blogs derived from its collection of recorded interviews. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Interviews may also be read in their entirety or checked out at the main library. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Sleepy Cat Farm:A Garden for the Ages - Celebrating America's 250th

 

Garden views with a reflecting pool. Photo by Brian Jones. Courtesy of the Garden Conservancy.

By Mary A. Jacobson

The word “garden” is an understatement when used to describe Sleepy Cat Farm, a wondrous thirteen-and-a-half-acre delight in Greenwich. It is more of an experience, an enchanted setting, a cultivated landscape utopia.

What was the inspiration behind this horticultural gem? Pat Norcross, a volunteer with the Oral History Project, interviewed owner Fred Landman in 2024 to document the history of Sleepy Cat Farm. It all started in 1994 when Fred Landman bought a home on six acres on Clapboard Ridge Road in Greenwich. At that time, updating the house was his focus. “A wonderful house, brick Georgian house, and that sort of became fun to do, working with an architect, working with a decorator.”

As work continued, a landscape architect was engaged to help answer the question, “How does this house relate to the landscape?” In time, the vision of the property became the creation of a sense of harmony between the two. “I said, well, we’ve got this whole woodland area; we can do something there… And then we did the Golden Path with the Spirit Walk (a raised walkway made of Spanish cedar) through the Iris Garden, and it was great fun.” The Golden Path is a gold colored decomposed granite pathway, inspired by the Golden Path designed by landscape architect Russell Page in 1980 for PepsiCo’s one-hundred acre Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in Purchase, NY. The Golden Path at Sleepy Cat Farm leads the stroller to an adventure of discovery.

Serendipitously, four years later, a neighbor asked Landman, “Would you like to buy two (adjacent) acres?” And I said, “Sure… It was the excitement of what we could do.” This new, enlarged acreage resulted in “making a big vegetable garden, a walled vegetable garden and a big greenhouse… and then, we ended up building what we call the barn, which is a wonderful entertaining space. And the whole new vocabulary is French-Norman.” Visitors were often surprised to learn that the additions, which “were meant to look like they had been here forever,” were only four years old.

Part of Landman’s personal education for the design of his gardens came through his long-term association with Charles Stick, a renowned landscape architect, prized nationally for his work. “Whenever I’d go somewhere, he (Stick) said, ‘You know, you should see this garden, this garden, and this garden in this area.’” Landman has visited gardens in Italy, England, Ireland, France, China, and Japan, among others. The ones he appreciates the most “are the ones that draw you in. You get lost. Your sense of self has disappeared and you’re just in there.”

Landman views Sleepy Cat Farm as a series of rooms. “Some are rather formal with very clipped hedges. One has that undulating hornbeam hedge… and behind that, that’s an ilex hedge, which you can see crenulated. Those are adjacent rooms.” At last rendering, Landman could count eight different projects at Sleepy Cat Farm in which Stick had been engaged. “I’m not a gardener. I had no formal training, but I’ve spent thirty years listening carefully to some very good people… I listened and they listened.”

Landman regards his garden as a continuing creation. “Gardens are never done. They’re always evolving.” In 2012, when presented with the opportunity to acquire another three-and-a-half acres Landman created a limonaia, a controlled environment for lemon cultivation, where an abandoned storehouse had previously existed. Inspired by limonaias he had viewed in Italy, this rebuilt structure provided for a unique and architecturally distinct setting for Meyer lemon cultivation, as well as a place for quiet reflection.

What does Landman want others to experience as they stroll through his garden? “A sense of wonder. People say, ‘Every time I turn, you had something else for me to see.’ The pathway’s meant to draw you down… you hear the sound of water, but you don’t know where it’s coming from. As you come around the bend… there’s a grotto and a water-babbling brook that goes into a pond where Venus is looking at her reflection… It’s just sort of great fun.” Over thirty statuaries have been placed throughout the, now, thirteen-and-a-half-acre property. Landman recalled, “People always say, ‘Oh, I just don’t have a garden like this.’ And I say well, you don’t need a garden like this. Do something you really like, that pleases you aesthetically, and that’s your garden.”

Sleepy Cat Farm has a close affiliation with the Garden Conservancy, a non-profit organization dedicated to “preserving, sharing, and celebrating America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.” Since 1995, the Open Days program of the Garden Conservancy has enabled thousands of private gardens across the country to be visited by the public. For approximately the past twenty years, Sleepy Cat Farm has participated in these scheduled open garden tour days. The most recent occurred on June 7; the next one is scheduled for August 29. As the most well-attended tour in the Garden Conservancy national garden visiting program, tickets for Sleepy Cat Farm are capped at 900 visitors per day.

In July 2026, the Garden Conservancy relocated its headquarters from Garrison, New York, to 4 Greenwich Office Park and a closer collaboration with the Sleepy Cat Farm Foundation. The goal of the Foundation is to endow Sleepy Cat Farm with sufficient funds to allow it to be maintained for many decades to come. It would remain private, open to Garden Conservancy tours and to other garden interest groups. When the main house on the property is no longer occupied, the plan is for it to transition into the headquarters of the Garden Conservancy, with continuing educational and cultural programs.

As Fred Landman says, “I want this to go on forever… I can’t think of a better organization to be here.”

The Oral History Project is proud to present blogs derived from its collection of recorded interviews as part of the Project’s celebration “America’s 250th|Greenwich: Greenwich History is American History.” Visit the website at glohistory.org. Interviews may also be read in their entirety or checked out at the main library. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Chinese Pavilion surrounded by a koi pond. Photo by Kathy Landman. Courtesy of Sleepy Cat Farm.

Greenhouse and walled vegetable garden. Photo by Kathy Landman. Courtesy of Sleepy Cat Farm.