Christian Swartz House (1875)

Christian Swartz (1846-1932) served as mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882. He was born in Württemberg, Germany and came to America with his parents in 1849 at the age of three. In 1868, in partnership with Jeremiah Bernd of Danbury, Swartz opened a cigar shop in South Norwalk called C. Swartz and Company. In 1880, this became the Old Well Cigar Company. As related in Vol. IV of Men of Mark in Connecticut (1906), by William R. Goodspeed:

In 1882 the business of South Norwalk had grown to such large proportions that another bank was deemed a necessity. In company with Hon. R. H. Rowan, Hon. John H. Ferris, Hon. Talmadge Baker, and other prominent men, he was one of the organizers of the City National Bank, and has continued as a director of said bank since that time. In the re-organizatíon of the Norwalk Lock Company, he became one of the directors and has continued as such.

Christian Swartz‘s public services began before he entered business life. At the age of eighteen years he enlisted in the Union cause in the Civil War and served until peace was established, a period of ten months. Since that time his public services have been political rather than military, and to him politics has always meant service to his fellows of the best and highest kind. He has followed the tenets of the Democratic political body and became a Gold Democrat. He was city councilman in 1878, mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882, sheriff of Fairfield County from 1884 to 1887, and he has been a member of the state shell-fish commission since 1893. He is the present chairman of the city water commission, president of the board of estimates and taxation of the town of Norwalk and President of the Norwalk Hospital. He has been in many other ways a strong factor in local politics and civic growth and prosperity.

A man of deep religious convictions and training, Mr. Swartz is a devoted and regular member of the South Norwalk Congregational Church. He is a chairman of the business committee of that church and a member of the Christian Inquiry Club connected with that body. He has many fraternal and social ties, and is a Mason, and a Knight Templar. He was elected Grand Commander of the Knights Templar of Connecticut in 1892. He is a member of the South Norwalk Club, the Norwalk Club, and the Norwalk Country Club. He is fond of outdoor life, particularly at the sea-shore, and of late years has become a devotee of physical culture.

Swartz’s Italianate house, built circa 1875, is at 16 Haviland Street in South Norwalk. It contains two apartments and is part of a 21-unit rental housing enclave called Haviland Gates.