New Canaan Library (1913)

The New Canaan Library was founded by volunteers in 1877 and received its first annual grant from the town in 1895. Housed for many years in a reading room on Elm Street, the library moved to a new building at 151 Main Street in 1913. Designed by Alfred H. Taylor of New York and New Canaan, the library is constructed of irregular fieldstone blocks. The building was expanded in 1937 and 1952 and the Lapham Wing was added in 1979. Due to increasing usage, the library is seeking to to replace its aging facilities.

Hanford Davenport House (1820)

In 1817, Hanford Davenport married Hannah, daughter of Col. Enoch St. John of New Canaan. Between 1819 and 1821, Davenport built a house in New Canaan on land owned by his father-in-law. The Federal-style house, perhaps built on the site of an earlier colonial-era house, is particularly notable for the high quality of its Adamesque interior carving, made by Deacon Hiram Crissey. The house, located at the corner of Oenoke Ridge and Lambert Road, was added to over the years up until the 1920s. It was later owned by Dr. N. W. Green and is sometimes called the Davenport-Green House.

Congregational Church of New Canaan (1843)

The first meeting house of the Congregational Church of Canaan Parish was built in 1732-1733 in New Canaan on Church Hill (known as God’s Acre because of the burying ground one located on the hill, until the graves were later moved elsewhere). A second, larger meeting house was built in 1750-1752. Canaan Parish was incorporated as the Town of New Canaan in 1801. After the second church building was damaged by a lightning strike, it was replaced by the current church, completed in 1843. The church was incorporated as the Congregational Church of New Canaan in 1902.

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, New Canaan (1833)

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in New Canaan was originally built as St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The Anglican church in New Canaan originally met in a building on West Road, deeded to “professors of the Church of England” by a wealthy landowner in 1764. This was replaced by a new Episcopal church, built in 1833-1834 on God’s Acre in the center of New Canaan. The church (it was initially painted brown, but later painted white), continued as an Episcopal church until the current St. Mark’s was built in 1959-1961 on Oenoke Ridge. In 1962, the old church was acquired by the Board of American Missions of the Augustana Lutheran Church for a new Lutheran mission congregation, organized the following year as St. Michael’s Lutheran Church. That same year, St. Michael’s gave the adjacent Ludlow House, which had been included with the church property, to the New Canaan Historical Society in exchange for nearly an acre of land to be used for additional parking.

St. John-Ashwell House (1742)

In 1742, Jonathan Huested purchased a newly built house, on what is now Park Street in New Canaan, from Henry Inman. The house was next owned by Lt. David St. John. It was later home to the Lieutenant’s granddaughter, Hannah, who married the Congregational minister, Rev. Theophilus Smith in 1831. Her brother, Dr. Samuel St. John, was born in the house in 1813. A notable scientist, he was a professor at the Western Reserve College in Ohio and later the Cleveland Medical College. He later returned to New Canaan, serving for twenty years as Professor of Chemistry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, and lived in a house across from the old St. John House. A few months before his death, he gave a Historical Address in the Congregational Church on the Centennial, July 4, 1876. The old house remained in St. John family until it was sold to Helen M. Ashwell in 1919. The entrance was originally on the north side, but the current front door faces Park Street.