A winding tree-lined drive leads guests to a clearing where a stately manor stands. The drive and the home haven’t changed much in 100 years, but their inhabitants have. It has been home to children playing and fishing on the pond, farmers growing corn and raising chickens and pigs, an oil tycoon, the first aviator to land his private plane in town, and an actor who made a name for himself as a kooky but endearing time-traveling scientist.
Here, polo players have raced up and down a field on horseback, countless performances have been held, children have learned to swim and morning joggers have contemplated life. This year, Waveny Park celebrates 50 years since the town acquired approximately 300 acres from former resident and philanthropist Ruth Lapham Lloyd. As parties are planned and drawings are completed to bring the house and park through the next 50 years of its journey, the Advertiser presents a three-part series to reflect on its historically significant past, take a look at its role in the community today and find out more about what’s in store for Waveny in the future. This is part one.
Beginnings of a town treasure
The history Waveny Park as we know it today begins in July 1895 when New York City leather merchant Thomas W. Hall purchased 175 acres in what was then called New Canaan’s Talmadge Hill section. Then, in 1896, Hall bought another 92-acre farm from fellow New York City businessman, commuter and Stamford resident Charles R. Christy, according to The Story of Waveny, a book written and published for the town in 1969 by then New Canaan historian Lois Bayles, Mary Louise King, the granddaughter of Thomas W. Hall, and F. David Lapham, grandson of Lewis H. Lapham.
The Halls named their farm Prospect Farm, says the book, because of its “prospect” of the Long Island Sound (a view that extended to the Sound and had some water views at the time). They lived in the farmhouse until their new home, a three-and-a-half-story Dutch colonial with gray-stained shingles, gabled roof and several railed balconies, was completed in 1896. The Halls’ house had wide verandas on the south and west sides, huge plate glass windows facing south in all the rooms on the ground floor so one could enjoy the view, and a porte cochère on the south, serving as the main entrance.
“It was most certainly a gentleman’s farm,” said Janet Lindstrom, retiring executive director of the New Canaan Historical Society, in an interview with the Advertiser.
A grand farmhouse
In the same Dutch colonial style, Hall built a powerhouse for the electric generators, boilers and water pumps to provide light, heat and water to the house and barns. The same building still stands today and serves as a theater. At 9 p.m. nightly, according to The Story of Waveny, engineer Frank Pearson would flicker the lights to warn everyone power would be shut down at 9:30 p.m. In 1896, Hall also built a carriage barn. Here, he stored his business wagon, sidecar and tallyho (a four-in-hand coach), his wife’s phaeton (the first hybrid car) and a donkey cart his son Philip had brought back from Ireland (with Irish donkey, of course). In 1902, Hall bought New Canaan’s second automobile, a Stanley Steamer.
Hall did his farming on the west side of the property: a large potato field, vegetable garden, orchard, piggery, hennery, turkeys, and a pigeon house, as well as five pedigreed Jersey cows and several workhorses. In 1896 and 1897 he added another 120 acres, adding another house to the property (the Leeds house, which burned down in a fire in 1903, was replaced by another but not a replica of the old farmhouse). He also built a four-hole golf course — the last hole situated south of the house.
The Laphams and The Big House
In 1903, money got tight for the Hall family. Hall had made some investments: more than $25,000 in a synthetic linen company and even more to back his son’s venture in offset lithography, says The Story of Waveny. Hall sold Prospect farm in 1904 to a friend and competitor, another successful leather merchant, Lewis H. Lapham, whose father had once helped a young Hall find his way into the leather business in 1866. Lapham tanneries had discovered oil at the turn of the century and Lapham was in the midst of organizing and financing the Texas Oil Company (now Texaco, Inc.).
Lapham and his wife, Antoinette, had two sons, Roger D. and John H. and two daughters, Elinor and Ruth. Antoinette named the farm Waveny after the Waveny River in England where her ancestors were from. She hated the Dutch colonial farmhouse and insisted they build a new house. Between 1908 and 1909, they built a number of outbuildings on the property, including chicken houses for their poultry farming, which was suspended after America entered World War I because it was no longer economically prudent.
In 1912, construction began on “The Big House” as it was called. William B. Tubby of Greenwich, a friend of the Laphams, designed the house. Tubby was a well-known architect at the time and designed many buildings in the Northeast from private estates in Greenwich to row houses in Brooklyn. He is known for his Romanesque and Dutch-revival designs. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., whose father designed Central Park, was hired as landscape architect to design the grounds. Olmstead, Jr. was known as a conservationist and worked on many parks across the country and national sites including the National Mall and White House grounds. He and his brother were carrying on the father’s legacy with successor firm Olmstead Brothers, and their roster of professionals whom they called on to work on the Waveny project between 1911 and 1917 includes esteemed landscape architects Percival Gallagher and A. Chandler Manning, according to a document from the New Canaan Preservation Alliance celebrating 100 years since the home was built.
The new Lapham house was Tudor style, named for a type of brick structure built in England during the reign of Tudor kings in the 16th century. The first floor has a grand hall, library, sitting room, dining room, breakfast room, billiard room, large kitchen and patio. Upstairs were five large bedrooms and a master suite as well as servants’ quarters including seven bedrooms. Inside, design firm Herter Looms, founded by well-known decorator Albert Herter, designed the interiors and decorated the walls with murals and paintings — as was fashionable among New York City area mansions. Herter also did well-known murals in state buildings in Wisconsin, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The main hall is still adorned with these paintings depicting medieval scenes and sets the scene for numerous weddings and special events.
Life at Waveny
When the new house was finished in 1914, Antoinette dropped the “farm” from Waveny farm and it was then called Waveny. She was a founding member of the New Canaan Garden Club and frequently hosted the club over tea in the Great Hall. Lewis Lapham played billiards after dinner and was a competent organist and an avid golfer (although he did not maintain Hall’s four-hole course).
In 1915, the Laphams built The Bungalow as a summer house for their son Jack. Jack was an athlete who frequently swam at the pool house and played polo on his own polo field on the property (just 15 yards short of a standard 300-yard field but sufficed for the first polo match to be played in New Canaan in 1915). While most games were informal affairs with the neighbors, after World War I ended in 1918, Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien, Conn., began sponsoring matches. In 1919, Jack Lapham bought more property to the west of Lapham Road and built a polo stable, which was destroyed by fire in 1967.
In 1924, the Laphams bought a house and 25 more acres along the southern border of Waveny to serve as their daughter Elinor’s summer home with her husband Sherman Ford. The Fords summered there until the property was sold in the 1960s after Ford’s death.
In 1927, their son Jack, no longer into polo, took up flying lessons and landed the first ever plane in New Canaan in 1928 — a new Spartan biplane, which he flew up from Texas. That year they built a hangar to house the plane (with a price tag of $1,400). Over the next 10 years, the family had two hangers and a few planes. Jack’s wife and children all became licensed pilots and the family frequently flew in and out of Waveny. (Jack’s wife was also a proficient golfer who captured the national Woman’s Senior Golf title at Westchester Country Club according to an article in the New York Times circa 1936 from the New Canaan Historical Society.)
In 1934, Lewis Lapham died. David Lapham (Jack’s second son) was living in the bungalow by now with his family. David was the last to have an airplane (a cub coupe), which he retired in 1939 at the start of World War II. He entered the service in 1942.
At that time, there were offers to buy the property from Antoinette, but at the urging of her daughters she didn’t sell. Instead, she moved into the bungalow and her daughter Ruth Lloyd and family moved into the “Big House” in 1940. Lloyd kept up the home through the war years. Antoinette moved to California to live with her son Roger. She died in 1956.
Gifts to the Town
Lloyd, who raised seven children, including actor Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame, is known as the fairy godmother of New Canaan for her numerous contributions to the community. After she took possession of Waveny, she donated seven acres to the town to serve as the parking lot at the Talmadge Hill train station. In 1966, she donated another 46 acres at the north end of the property to build New Canaan High School. Then in August 1967, she offered to sell the town 250 acres for $1.5 million and donate an additional 50 acres, plus all the buildings on the property (a total 300 acres valued of $2.5 million), according to articles in the Advertiser and the New York Times.
When then First Selectman Charles F. Kelley signed the papers at the real estate closing he told the newspaper, “It was the first time I ever spent $1.5 million so fast!” It was also the start of a new era for Waveny and for the town. (The then Town Treasurer V. Donald Hersam, Jr. signed two checks for the purchase price because the Elm Street State National Bank’s Check Writer was limited to $999,999.99.)
An aerial view of The Big House at Waveny, built by Lewis and Antoinette Lapham in 1914, the parents of Ruth Lapham Lloyd (1896-1984), second, who became known as the fairy godmother of New Canaan. Illustration, below, shows various uses around the property, including the landing and take-off routes for airplanes. — From ‘Waveny – New Canaan’s Treasure’ by Arianne Faber Kolb and Nicole Johnson Murphy, a publication of the New Canaan Preservation Alliance. Illustration by Nicole Johnson Murphy.
Lewis Henry Lapham, a co-founder of Texaco Oil Company, built The Big House. — From ‘Waveny – New Canaan’s Treasure’ by Arianne Faber Kolb and Nicole Johnson Murphy. On the Waveny property are Mr. and Mrs. Jack Lapham and their airplanes, below. — From ‘The Story of Waveny,’ by the New Canaan Historical Society.
The Carriage House, left, and the Power House, center, remain today on Waveny grounds in New Canaan. The windmill is gone. — From ‘The Story of Waveny,’ by the New Canaan Historical Society.
The post Waveny: Past, Present and Future appeared first on New Canaan Advertiser.