Tavern owners plan to protect wetland

NORTH CANAAN — A plan for extensive work along the Blackberry River on the Isaac Lawrence House property is on the agenda of the Inland Wetlands Commission for its meeting Jan. 22.

Property owners Charles and Elizabeth Goodyear are hoping for approval for a project aimed at restoration of the riverbank and a silt pond as a habitat for fish and wildlife. They are not asking for any public funding for the work.

The project is notable for its high profile. The site is very visible, and is just west of the Route 7 bridge over the Blackberry River.

The property is also a notable one: It is believed to be the town’s first home, dating back to the mid-1700s. It is commonly known as the Lawrence Tavern, after one of the businesses that thrived there in its earliest days. Now a private home, and still owned by descendants of  Isaac Lawrence, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Commissioners will be less interested in history than they will be with a 280-foot rock wall proposed for the north bank of the river and other work that will involve a total of 4,662 square feet on the property.

Probably surprising even to people who pass by there regularly is that there are really two bridges, one over the Blackberry and another spanning an open-runoff cut  across Route 7 from a low-lying cornfield.

The area floods each spring and in heavy rain storms. The silt pond’s purpose is to filter contaminants from the runoff. But it badly needs dredging; capacity has been greatly reduced and runoff often flows directly into the river.

The meeting is at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less