Life in Falls Village, generations ago

Longtime Falls Village resident Rev. Cyril Wismar (1918-2012) shared with The Lakeville Journal his remembrances, written in May, 2011, of a Falls Village/Town of Canaan of a different time. His wife of 68 years, Sylvia, was glad to allow us to share them now with our readers. The first part can be found in last week’s Lakeville Journal or at www.tricornernews.com. Part 2 of 2 A mile beyond our property was a farm owned by Felix Beaubaux, who came to my mother’s rescue one day in the long ago. Because she considered Upper Barrack Road too difficult she elected to use Lower Barrack Road to drive with the Model T Ford, and we got stuck. At times, portions of that road became mired in mud, and the car got stuck. My brother and I walked the mile or so up the road to ask a favor of good Felix. Would he get his oxen yoked and come down the road to extricate our car from the mud? He did. In those days, people here did not belong to AAA Road Service. The farm from which that welcome help came is now known as the center of Music Mountain, Inc. Not only did the beginnings of that cultural contribution to our town bring much musical beauty, but it hastened the paving of the road and the acquisition of electricity.In 1929, my brother and I would walk the mile or more to observe the buildings being constructed by Sears, Roebuck and Company for Maestro Jacques Gordon who had left his Concert Master position with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to establish the Gordon String Quartet and their summer series of concerts and student workshops.Now let us move to that which was the throbbing heart of the community, the center of Falls Village, some three miles away. Main Street was unpaved. Matter of fact, so was our portion of US Route 7. There were no sidewalks either. The most direct road was Warren Turnpike, then there were a few houses and the first Roman Catholic Church. It has burned down as a result of some live coals that fell from a passing freight train. That, by the way, was the first Roman Catholic Church building that stood between Pittsfield, Mass., and Bridgeport, Conn. It became the mother of a large number of parishes, including St. Joseph’s in North Canaan and St. Mary’s in Lakeville.Passing under the railroad trestle bridge, to the left down the hill was the power plant, built in 1914, to the right up the grade one saw the Town Green with Town Hall to one side and the Falls Village Inn around the corner. There was a garage run by Eddie Houston, now owned by the Jacobs family. At times it doubled as a blacksmith shop for a horse that might have thrown a shoe. The next building contained one of the two general stores and beyond there was a drugstore, which also dispensed, without prescription, bootleg booze. Next came the railroad station which had an office for American Railway Express. Across the street from this complex was the beginning of the firehouse. In the building with the Town Hall, the post office claimed one half of the main floor of that building. Next to it was a savings bank, then the Methodist Church. Across from the savings bank, another bank and a general store. In the next building was a barbershop. Further up the street on that side a doctor’s office and residence; opposite that, a hardware store (now the Toymaker’s Cafe) and a feed grain store were housed in that building.On the next corner was the library which housed the elementary school classes. The six one-room schools had been closed in 1919.The high school students, mostly girls since the boys were farmhands, commuted by train to the upper school in North Canaan. Students from as far away as Kent also were in class up there. Housatonic Valley Regional High School was dedicated in 1939. The Lee Kellogg School, first unit, was completed in 1949, and on Beebe Hill Road there were two active churches. The Congregational Chapel was there and the main house of worship for congregationalists was located in the “suburb” of South Canaan, where the 1804 Meetinghouse stood.Postscript: It was on my 11th birthday that I was given a ride in a Curtis Robin single motor airplane piloted by Floyd Brinton. My brother joined me, and we were both flown over the town and Barrack Mountain where we could see our property and the neighbors who were out waving sheets.The town of Canaan, Falls Village, is no longer a land of milk, but it is a honey of a town, and any way you look at it, a lovely place in which to live.

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