Historic Hattertown Homes Will Open On Saturday

By Shannon Hicks

When seven privately-owned homes in the historic Hattertown district of Newtown open on Saturday, visitors will find themselves looking into buildings that have served as everything from farmhouses and button shops to hat factories and even a stop along a turnpike.

One of the homes, built just last year, offers the opposite end of the spectrum: A look into what, three centuries later, the earliest residents of Newtown could have only dreamed of. The house at 26 Eden Hill Road –– built last year and modeled after a home in Williamsburg, Va. –– is large enough to hold a few times over the house at 8 Eden Hill Road, also on the tour this year and considered by many historians perhaps the oldest dwelling in town.

The homes have been selected by former Newtown Historical Society resident Sallie Meffert for this year’s historical society Historic Homes Tour. The public will be welcome to visit the homes on Saturday, July 6, between 11 am and 5 pm. Tickets are $20, and each purchase comes with a clear map with directions to the homes. Tickets will be available Saturday morning at C.H. Booth Library (25 Main Street) or Matthew Curtiss House (44 Main Street).

Everyone taking part on the tour must have a ticket to enter the homes; organizers are suggesting, therefore, that younger children do not participate. And without exception, pets will not be allowed on the tour.

Open this weekend will be 71 Aunt Park Lane, 1 Hi Barlow Road and 3 Hi Barlow Road, and the two mentioned earlier on Eden Hill Road.

There are also two homes on Hattertown Road. Chris and David Goodwick will open their house, at 201 Hattertown Road, for Saturday’s event. The house is one of three on this year’s tour that was built just before the turn of the 19th Century.

“It was built 1790, and it used to be an old tollhouse,” Mrs Goodwick said last week. “The house across the street and this house, according to the people who lived here previously, were connected somehow and people had to pass here and pay a toll on their way to Danbury.”

Hattertown Road today follows what 200 years ago was the Monroe-Newtown Turnpike. Mrs Goodwick says when she and her husband David first moved into the house 17 years ago they used to find old coins.

The house is not huge compared to the homes being built today, but it is not as small as it originally was, either. The Goodwicks added on to the original dwelling as their family grew (Chris and Dave have three children), putting on what is now the master bedroom and expanding the kitchen.

“We haven’t really changed much from the original house,” Mrs Goodwick said.

“The living room and dining room have their original beams, but we’ve added some on. The kitchen was renovated, yes, but we’ve always tried to keep the house looking as though all of the work is from the same period.”

The property has a number of original outbuildings, which the Goodwicks have been told is where cows were kept when their property was farmland. The foundation for a silo is still visible behind an outbuilding that was once the barn.

The property also has a house in the back, which was moved in from Easton. Mrs Goodwick’s mother resides in that house.

Also, as visitors enter through the main home’s back door they can see an old root cellar where vegetables were once stored. “There’s nothing in there now, but it’s still noticeably cooler in there,” said Mrs Goodwick.

Good Karma

Just down the road from the Goodwicks, the property at 188 Hattertown Road will also be open this weekend. The Matterich Farm is now owned by Matthew Schlansky and Richard Barker, who have lived in the home for two decades.

Most drivers along Hattertown Road have no idea what the house or its surrounding yard look like, thanks to a privacy fence installed decades ago that cuts down significantly on the amount of noise created by traffic passing a house situated so close to a main road.

Aside from the property’s red barn, the windows looking out from the upper floor of the farm house, the flag over the front door, and even perhaps the rooster weathervane atop a screened-in and inviting porch, most of those who will be participating in Saturday afternoon’s homes tour have never seen the handsomely landscaped lawn, the tidy driveway lined with potted plants, nor anything within the walls of 188 Hattertown Road.

“I’ve been here for 20 years, but I’ve never made the time [to look into the history of the property],” Mr Schlansky said this week. The details of Matterich Farm’s history are not important to Mr Schlansky.; it is the idea that there even is a history behind his home.

“It’s a charming, strong house,” he continued. “It was built in 1790, but it has the durability to continue even further into the future.

“I love the strength and the smell of this house. It’s charming. I love the idea that the house is surrounded by history.”

Mr Schlansky and Mr Barker are both in the fashion design industry, following different avenues.

“One of the most interesting things is, I think it was by a fluke that we found this house,” Mr Schlansky said. “There were hats and buttons being produced just down the road, right near the [Hattertown] green, and I find it amazing that the karma of the hatting and button shops brought us to this house.

“I love this house,” Mr Schlansky said. “I love the house, the property, and I love this town.”