It’s time to play Jeopardy! The category is Fancy Attire. The answer: In 1949, these young ladies dressed in their finest for this event. The question: What is… the high-school prom? Guess again. What is… a concert at the Music Shed? Right! (See a familiar face, second from the left?) The Shed had been built by Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel in 1906 for the Litchfield County Choral Union and the renowned Norfolk Music Festivals. After Ellen’s death in 1939, the Norfolk Music School used the Music Shed only for organ lessons, while concerts were given in the smaller recital hall at Battell House. Community events, such as Center School graduation exercises took place in the shed, but few musical performances until 1949, when it was decided that a major concert would be held to reestablish the shed as the “Music Center of Litchfield County.” By 1951, the Shed had come back to life with the annual concerts of the newly revived Litchfield County Choral Union. (And the familiar face? It is our own Janice Bruey Gabelmann.)

—Ann Havemeyer

Photo courtesy of the Norfolk Historical Society.