Date: Fri 23-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

historic-national-register

Full Text:

Historical Panel To Field Questions On National Register Listings

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

The Connecticut Historical Commission will conduct a public meeting in Newtown

at 7 pm on Wednesday in the Newtown Meeting House on proposals to add the

Hattertown Historic District and the Newtown Borough Historic District to the

National Register of Historic Places.

The purpose of the meeting is to answer questions local residents may have

about the Historic Register designation. The State Historic Preservation Board

will consider the two historic areas for nomination to the National Register

at the board's meeting in Hartford on October 3. The final decision will be

made by the US Department of the Interior.

In both cases, the proposed National Register districts are larger than the

historic districts that exist in each area.

"This proposal encompasses all of the Main Street properties, all of the

properties listed in the proposed historic district, which was defeated in

1995," said Borough Warden Joan Crick. "It is not just the properties in the

historic district which was created this year."

During the decades of effort to create a historic district on Main Street,

some property owners said they would prefer to have a National Register

listing.

"The listing is more of an honorific designation," Mrs Crick explained. "It

does not put any restrictions on what can be done to the property."

When the proposed historic district was defeated last year, the Borough Board

of Burgesses sent a letter to John Shannahan, executive director of the

Connecticut Historical Commission, asking that the area be placed on the

National Register.

The state commission hired historic resource consultants Bruce Clouette and

Hoang Tinh of Hartford to prepare the application which includes an in-depth

report of the area and its history. The area which will be included extends

along Main Street from Hawley Road to Johnnie Cake Lane. No 3 and 5 Church

Hill Road; 4,5,7,8,10 Currituck Road; 2 and 6 Academy Lane, and 2,4,6,8,10 and

11 West Street also are included, as is the Ram Pasture.

The area, approximately 100 acres, includes more than 200 buildings including

houses, barns, churches, public buildings and commercial buildings ranging in

style from the plain vernacular architecture of the colonial period to various

Victorian styles to the Colonial Revival style of the early twentieth century.

Two notable objects also were included by the consultants as historical

resources: the granite Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the 110-foot tall

steel flagpole, which is successor to the Liberty Pole originally erected in

1876.

The area includes one property that is already on the National Register: the

Glover House, also known as the Budd House, at 50 Main Street.

Hattertown District

The proposed 55-acre National Register district in Hattertown includes the

Hattertown Green, 52 and 71 Aunt Park Lane, 62 Castle Meadow Road, a vacant

lot at 101 Castle Meadow Road; 208, 214, 215, 219 and 224 Hattertown Road, and

1, 3, 7 and 8 Hi Barlow Road. The report, prepared by National Register

consultant Jan Cunningham of Cunningham Associates, Ltd, in Middletown, lists

34 "historic resources" including barns, sheds, privies and other outbuildings

and and Lewis Brook.

"With its gleaming white houses and red barns, the Hattertown Historic

District is the quintessential Connecticut village, so often imagined but

rarely found," the report said. "Though the sights, sounds and odors of the

bustling hat trade are long gone, a picturesque historic landscape of

exceptional integrity remains. Little has changed since the nineteenth

century."

Like the Borough Historic District, the Hattertown area proposed for the

National Register is larger than the historic district formed in Hattertown in

1971. The cost of placing both the Borough and the Hattertown areas on the

National Register will be paid by the state. When done individually by

property owners, the cost of placing a building on the National Register

generally ranges from $1,500 to $1,800.

Listing in the National Register enables property owners to apply for federal

grants for historic preservation when funds are available. Federal investment

tax credits are available for rehabilitating historic commercial, industrial

and rental residential buildings.

Last year the Newtown Historical Society received a $5,000 matching

federal/state grant to survey all of the pre-1825 homes in Newtown. The state

later provided an additional $4,000 in grant money to expand the survey to

include all pre-1945 homes in the borough.

This year the town-owned Nichols Satinet Mill site in the Orchard Hill Nature

Center was placed on the National Register.

In Connecticut, a listing on the National Register entitles property owners to

purchase historical markers from the State Historical Commission. It also

provides a legal recourse to stop the "unreasonable destruction" of historic

structures and landmarks if demolition is proposed.

But beyond that, the National Registry has little control over what individual

property owners do to their properties. It can't prevent the commercialization

of a property or alterations to buildings, according to Paul Loether, the

historical commission's architectural historian and National Register

specialist.

Mrs Crick said that in addition to legal advertising in The Bee, letters were

sent to each borough property owner informing them of the potential National

Register listing.

"Owners of private properties nominated to the National Register have an

opportunity to concur or object to the listing," said Mr Shannahan, who is

also the state's historic preservation officer.

If, after the meeting is held in Newtown, property owners object to a National

Register listing, they must submit a notarized statement which certifies that

they are a sole or partial owner of the private project and that they object

to the listing. The notarized letter must be submitted to John W. Shannahan,

State Historic Preservation Officer, 59 South Prospect Street, Hartford, CT

06106 by the day of the October 3 board meeting.