In renovating the building at the corner of West and Main Streets, the history of the property has been a priority for developers Chris Wilson and Chris Hottois, of Flint Ridge Development, LLC, in Monroe. Commonly known as “the Chase Building,” the structure was “a mess,” said Mr Hottois, when the partners purchased the building two years ago, and began restoration.

“When we acquired this building, it was in really tough shape,” Mr Hottois said, adding there was little indication that any maintenance had been performed in the past 50 years.

“You name it, it needed to be replaced,” agreed Mr Wilson. From floorboards to rafters, the building has slowly been brought up to code and returned to its dignified beauty of an earlier era.

The first year, contractors worked repairing and replacing the roof and gutters; addressing drainage issues; expanding and re-leveling the parking lot at the rear; and doing structural reinforcement. Removing unattractive exterior conduits and wires, plus a nine-month process of having a utility pole, hulking on the corner of West Street, moved back, have given the façade a new — and more original — look, the men said.

Mr Hottois did a fair amount of research on the Chase building. Time spent poring over archived Historical Society photographs at the library, and extensive reading of articles by Town Historian, Dan Cruson, was time well spent, he said.

“A lot of what we’ve done here is try to bring back a lot of the structural elements,” Mr Hottois said. When the drop ceiling was removed in the upper level of the building, which will provide office space for tenants, the partners discovered brackets hidden beneath.

“They were too pretty to have been buried,” Mr Wilson said. They had larger replicas of the brackets made and installed beneath the canopy that now stretches across the front of the building.

The idea of the canopy came from looking at photos from the late 19th and 20th Century, where canopies stretched out over a stoop in front of two of the businesses there. The addition of the stoop to the front of the building also echoes what can be seen in early photographs, Mr Hottois said.

Referring again to photographs, the men have designed the mahogany doors with arched transoms and the window frames to reflect how the building looked in the mid-to late- 1800s. Lampposts at the front and side of the building replicate those from the 19th Century.

Remnants of the building’s past have been few, said Mr Wilson and Mr Hottois. Only sections of a Waterbury newspaper from the early 1900s, stuffed into floorboards, and one or two 19th Century glass bottles have turned up.

The structural work that has been done will generally be hidden to the eye, but steel girders in the upper level ceiling will remain exposed, as will the wooden beams there.

Downstairs, Oberg Insurance will remain a tenant in the newly refurbished northern side of the building, while Dere Street Café and Bakery will occupy the side closest to West Street. Andrea’s Hair Studio, Nasar’s Hair Salon, and Electrology of Newtown, located in the lower level of the Chase building, are also enjoying upgrades. A new patio, stonewall, and a lamppost are attractive additions to the parking lot-level businesses.

“Our priority has been doing it right, as opposed to doing it fast,” Mr Wilson said, and they are grateful to the guidance provided by the Town of Newtown.

“Newtown has been fantastic,” said Mr Wilson. “The town is wonderful to work with, and that’s one reason we like to work with the properties in Newtown and Sandy Hook,” he said. The partners also own historic buildings in Sandy Hook Center.

“We’re not interested in projects to put up strip mall. We’re interested in buildings in a town center, with some history. We want to create something we can be proud of,” he said.

When renovations are completed on the building at the corner of West and Main Streets, it will be one more in a long line of changes shaping the antique building that has housed everything from grocery stores and soda fountains to real estate and an insurance office.

The First General Store

Newtown’s first general store opened sometime around 1785, in that location, said Town Historian Dan Cruson, and was owned by David Curtis. The footprint of that small dry goods store is now the site of the ongoing renovations. The building that housed the Curtis store is no longer at that precise location, but it has not disappeared from Newtown’s history.

“This is where it gets complicated,” admitted Mr Cruson. His essay in his 2005 book A Mosaic of Newtown History explains it most clearly.

Mr Curtis sold the store to the Nichols family, who in turn sold to the partnership of Baldwin and Beers. They operated the small store until selling it, in the late 1860s, to Henry Sanford, a wealthy merchant and property developer.

“This building originally consisted of two parts, a small, story-and-a-half section on the south end that was the store, and a larger two-story northern section,” Mr Cruson writes in Mosaic. That larger section had been built in 1825 by Baldwin and Beers, and was used as a town hall.

It was Mr Sanford who developed the building into what is recognized today as the Chase Building, and it was his decision to remove the store section, during renovations made in 1872, to the rear of the property.

In recent history, the little building was a floral shop. With current restoration, it will serve as Dere Street Bakery. It is undoubtedly the oldest commercial property in town, Mr Cruson said.

That building is also undergoing extensive renovations, due to the efforts of Mr Hottois and Mr Wilson. Like the main Chase Building, the tiny store in back, facing West Street, has had to be completely redone. Original wooden beams have been exposed, and the original wooden structure preserved.

Copper gutters decorate the exterior, functional and attractive at the same time. A new roof, and new paint have provided a needed facelift. The porch has been rebuilt, and a brick walkway repaired.

Inside, they have opened up a top floor into a loft, providing an expansive feel to the tiny, 600-square-foot space.

Exterior renovations to both buildings are nearing completion, said Mr Wilson and Mr Hottois, but finishing the interior is ongoing.

The Chase Building of today would not be so familiar, had Mr Sanford not extended the roof lines of the larger northern section southward, “doubling the size of the overall building and creating the building that one sees today,” Mr Cruson writes in Mosaic.

The bracketed style of the front of the building was part of the 1870s renovations, under the direction of builder Charles Glover, Mr Cruson said. Ornate brackets placed beneath the eaves was a style popular at that time.

The new section served as Mr Sanford’s store, beginning the long line of commercial enterprises that have populated 33 Main Street in the 143 years since.

The A&P: The Final Store

Robert H. Beers, married to Henry Sanford’s daughter, took over the store following Mr Sanford’s death in 1882. Mr Beers served the people of Newtown until his death in 1922. Two years later, the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) opened at that location.

The A&P was managed by J.J. Cahill of Bethel, and remained at the Main Street location until 1962, when it closed, moving to larger quarters in the Queen Street Shopping Center. That move left the building without a general store for the first time in its history.

Newtown’s original general store had plenty of company during its long run. Other businesses found their ways into the spaces that made up the northern section of the building, as well as upstairs and downstairs.

Robert Beers was the head of the telephone exchange, Mr Cruson said, and with that office located above the store, the proprietor found himself frequently dashing out the front door and up the stairs to the second story, in response to the ringing.

“Access to the upper level was always on the exterior of the building, to the south,” said Mr Cruson, until Joe Chase purchased the building, in 1962. The outside staircase was removed, and an interior staircase at the front and center of the building was installed.

Prior to 1909, Newtown Savings Bank was a tenant of the building, then known as the Atchison Building.

“Whoever happened to own it, named it,” said Mr Cruson.

The Newtown Bee’s first home office was above the Sanford store, in mid-1877. At the time, John Pearce of Bethel, who was said to print the paper on a rather erratic timetable, owned the paper. By 1880, Mr Pearce was heavily in debt to Mr Sanford, and sold the paper to Reuben Hazen Smith.

The Bee published from the Atchison Building until 1884, when it took up occupancy in the Newtown Academy building, further north on Main Street.

Tenants over the years have included dentists, financial planners, a drug store, a bookstore, beauty shops, a dry cleaner, the VNA thrift shop, and a stationery supplier.

The Flagpole Fountain

In the spring of 1932, John Burr opened the Fountain Lunch in the space adjacent to the general store (now the interior staircase). He sold the business to Harold Smith a year later, who renamed it the Flagpole Fountain Lunch. Mr Smith expanded the Fountain’s offerings into a tea room. It was a popular stop for travelers coming to the area, Mr Cruson said, and it is rumored that Marlon Brando was a customer there, more than once.

In the oral history Newtown Remembered, the late Vern Knapp recalled the Flagpole Fountain, owned by her father, Mr Smith.

“There was the fountain with the accouterments there and a mirror in the back and all. And then on the left was a magazine rack, newspaper rack. And then from there to the back was all drugs, packaged drugs. Not the drugs as we know them. It was a drug store. And then in the back there were booths… and the kitchen was next to the fountain… The fountain was a long counter. Then underneath was all metal with the cabinets with the cans of ice cream and then a sink and a glass rinser…”

Mrs Knapp also remembered other businesses in the Atchison building during the era of the Flagpole Fountain.

“There was the A&P, and then the Flagpole Fountain, and Ed Pitzschler — he was the barber… and he was also the correspondent for The Bridgeport Post… And then there was George Stuart’s insurance office next to that.”

The upstairs was rented as an apartment for a while, according to Mrs Knapp’s recollection.

In 1949, Flagpole Fountain Lunch was sold to Richard Hibbard, and it is unclear for how long the café operated after that, said Mr Cruson.

“It is possible that he continued to run the business until 1962 or so when Chase renovated the building and eliminated the soda fountain in favor of an interior stairway,” Mr Cruson guessed.

In the 1980s, 33 Main Associates, with several general partners, took ownership of the Chase building, during which time the property was referred to by some as “the Gold building.” (One of the general partners was Stephen Gold.) The building passed into the ownership of Mr Hottois and Mr Wilson in 2013.

“The Hottois-Wilson Building” is probably not in the cards, said the current owners. But again looking to the history of the building, they have come up with a possible name for it. They look forward to the day when renovations are completed, and The Liberty Pole Building enhances the historic atmosphere of Newtown’s Main Street.