Groundbreaking Scheduled For Fairfield Museum & History Center

FAIRFIELD — One month to the day after Fairfield’s Historic District Commission in a 4-0 vote approved the design, a half-dozen shovels will pierce the ground to ceremonially start construction of the Fairfield Museum & History Center.

From 11:30 am to noon on Saturday, December 10, Fairfield Historical Society members, local and state officials and other heritage-minded area residents will toast the project with cups of hot cider at the 370 Beach Road site. Also on hand will be a color guard from Boy Scout Troop 90 and choristers from the Mendelssohn Choir of Connecticut to sing the national anthem.

The public is invited to attend the groundbreaking and the festive reception to follow from noon to 1:30 pm at the historical society’s current home at 636 Old Post Road. Fairfield First Selectman Kenneth Flatto, State Representative Cathy Tymniak, State Senator John P. McKinney and US Congressman Christopher Shays are among the officials expected to participate.

“Come one, come all. We want everyone to know that Fairfield’s new History Center is something to celebrate,” said Historical Society Vice President Allen Rogers, who is organizing the event.

Designed by Jim Childress of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, an award-winning firm based in Essex, the Fairfield Museum & History Center will be a fully-accessible, one-story structure of 12,818 square feet. The elegant structure of wood and glass, inspired by Frederic Sturges’s 19th Century Mount David Farm, is altogether a different concept from the historical society’s existing 9,600-square-foot Colonial Revival headquarters on the Old Post Road, noted Barbara Geddis Wooten, chair of the building committee.

 In mid-December, the historical society hopes to demolish the building that now occupies part of the site. Site clearance will then begin, followed by 12 months of continuous construction, with the anticipated opening in late 2006 or 2007.