Main Street Residents Meet The Neighborhood—

A Progressive Dinner Party That Stayed In One Place

By Shannon Hicks

The Budd House is, like many of its neighboring homes, a prominent and historic figure on Newtown’s Main Street. The grand home at 50 Main Street, built in 1869 and at the time one of the largest and most impressive homes in town, is referred to as The Budd House by many residents who remember one of its previous owners, the late Mrs Florence Beecher Budd.

Although Mrs Budd died in 1977, the house continues to be referred to as “The Budd House.” Regardless of its owners, 50 Main Street has certainly seen its share of celebrations and visitors during its 130-plus year history. Last weekend’s may have been one of the largest ever.

Shane and George Miller, the current owners of 50 Main Street, took part in what planners hope will become an annual event: The Main Street Progressive Potluck Dinner. More than 80 people had dinner in the Millers’ home on Saturday, June 2.

The Progressive Dinner was originally to have been just that: A dinner for residents of Main Street that would have begun at one location and progressed along Main Street during the course of the evening. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks were going to be enjoyed at the home of Harold and Peggy Gross, at Ram Pasture. Residents would then enjoy walking along Main Street, enjoying close-up views of the homes and gardens of their neighbors, before finishing at 50 Main Street for desserts and coffee.

“We did something they said could not be done,” Lucy Sullivan said proudly this week. Mrs Sullivan, Peggy Gross, Brid Craddock, and Sherry Bermingham were the primary planners and organizers for the event, which began being talked about four months ago and planned for in earnest beginning almost eight weeks ago.

The women decided to have a party for Main Street’s residents. The guest list turned out to include every home on Main Street along with a few homes on the edges of the street, including East Street, West Street, Currituck and Lovell Lane. In keeping with the “neighborhood” theme of the evening, the women on the planning committee divided the area up into sections and hand-delivered the invitations rather than dropping them all into the mail.

“It was pretty purely Main Street,” Mrs Sullivan said. The idea was to create a gathering where a recognized district could come together as a neighborhood.

“We may not be a cul-de-sac, but we certainly have the ability to be a community in spite of the street,” Mrs Sullivan pointed out.

Food preparations were divided down the center of the road: residents of the east side of Main Street were asked to bring finger foods, and those on the west side were responsible for desserts. There was a charge of $5 per person to cover the soda, wine and beer, ice, paper goods, and other related miscellany.

When rain became a factor on June 2, the planning committee of the Progressive Potluck Dinner had to make some decisions: Postpone the dinner to its available rain date of June 3, or shift around the carefully laid plans and keep the event on for Saturday night.

“We panicked at one point when the weather turned really threatening,” Mrs Sullivan recalled this week. “But Shane [Miller] kept saying, ‘My house. My house will be fine.’ And she was right.”

So the entire party was shifted into 50 Main Street. Guests began arriving on time at 5:30 and nearly everyone stayed right up to the end, which came at 10:30.

“It was the most amazing turnout,” Mrs Sullivan said. “We all got to know each other, and all about each other’s houses. It was so much fun! We had a six-month-old and a 94-year-old and everything in the middle.”

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal and Michelle Rosenthal; the Reverend Kathie Adams-Shepherd, the rector at Trinity Church (36 Main Street); Gordon and Lina Williams; Harold and Peggy Gross; Una Mulligan; Bill Honan and his wife… the guest list almost read like a Who’s Who of Newtown, said Mrs Sullivan. “But it was for the neighborhood, not just the town’s leaders,” she pointed out.

Janet Woycik, the director of C.H. Booth Library at 25 Main Street, and Peter Leoni, the new owner of Newtown General Store at 43 Main Street, were also on the list of those invited.

Because there had been showers during the day, most of the adults who attended the party tended to stay on the side porches or in the dining rooms of the Millers’ home. Children, however, spent some time playing in the backyard before moving indoors to the Millers’ third floor playroom.

 “We weren’t at all nervous, or even worried, about having everything moved into our house,” Mrs Miller said this week. “We have a very large family so we do big things together.” George and Shane Miller have 12 grown children and eight grandchildren. “We’ve done parties before,” Mrs Miller said.

The Millers moved into their home in December 1999. One year later the house was included on the walking/historic house tour of the 2000 Newtown Holiday Festival. That Sunday afternoon, Mrs Miller recalled this week, over 900 people visited the house during the course of six hours.

“I hope other neighborhoods will get the idea to do this,” Mrs Miller said this week, fully recovered from the latest round of entertaining at her house. “We were a little tired on Sunday,” she admitted, “but people are already excited to do this next year. They’re already talking about what houses they want to include next year.

“Everybody seemed to have a good time,” Shane Miller continued. “I had a lot of help with the cleaning up, and everyone brought in the food. Everybody fit in very nicely.

“We’d host people again. Absolutely… as long as everyone brings the food again,” she laughed.

The three-story Second Empire-style residence was built in 1869 by Henry Beers Glover. He and Henry Beers owned the site, which originally contained two houses. One of the houses was torn down to make way for the current house; the second house was moved across the street to what is now just north of Edmond Town Hall.

The house remained in the same family for over 100 years before eventually finding itself in the hands of Florence Beecher, who married Stephen E. Budd. Mrs Budd lived in the house all of her life, until she died in 1977. The large Victorian residence is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Glover House, after its first owner.

Among its many distinctive exterior features are classic Corinthian columns supporting its spacious front porch and a mansard roof decorated with patterns created by the vari-colored and multi-shaped slate roofing tiles.