Tiffany Windows Attract Tourists

By Ruth Melville

Norfolk residents have always been proud of their town, and there is a growing feeling that it would be nice if other people knew more about the town’s rich artistic and architectural history. New efforts like the WIN weekend are designed in part with this in mind, but for the past decade, lifelong resident Sally Carr has been doing her part to make Norfolk a tourist destination.

About 10 years ago, the then owners of the Manor House invited Carr to meet one of their guests, a woman visiting from Darien, Conn., named Betty Cordellos. Cordellos owned a small tour company named ConneCTions, and she was thinking of bringing tours to the Northwest Corner. Did Carr have any suggestions of things her customers might like to see in the area? Indeed she did.

The tours that Carr and Cordellos decided to set up are organized around Norfolk’s connection with Louis Comfort Tiffany. The day’s events include a tour of the stained glass windows in Battell Chapel, with a talk by Nels White; a visit to a glassblower’s studio in Riverton; and a tour of Carr’s own house, Meadow Cottage, built in 1892 and the summer home of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s twin daughters, Julia deForest Tiffany and Louise Comfort Tiffany. Carr and her husband, Larry Hannafin, bought the house in 1974 and have kept most of the original furnishings, along with many items from the Manice deForest Lockwood house next door.

The tours now also include lunch, either at Infinity Bistro or Wood Creek Bar and Grill. Carr says she’s grateful for the cooperation and generosity of the two restaurants, who have to brace themselves for 55-60 people showing up at once.

Besides the ConneCTions tours, there have also been occasional special tours, for example, one set up with Ventfort Hall, a Gilded Age mansion and museum in Lenox, Mass., and another with Arthur Liverant, a dealer in early American antiques who lives in Colchester. In addition to seeing the Tiffany windows and Meadow House, these groups visited the Norfolk Library and Whitehouse, where Jim Nelson and Ann Havemeyer gave talks on the house and its art collection. The Liverant group was able to see the exhibition “Norfolk in the Great War” at the Historical Society, while the Ventfort Hall group finished their day with tea at another historic house in town, the 1908 Farman house, designed by Alfredo Taylor and now owned by Roger Mitchell and Pete Peterson.

The bus tours have proved to be very popular: there were five this fall, and three ConneCTions tours have already been booked for May 2018. Two buses, with about 50 people in each, have been booked for the same day. Carr gives every person who comes on a tour a copy of the Norfolk town brochure.

Organizing these tours, and getting her house ready for visitors, is a lot of work, Carr says, but she thoroughly enjoys it. They combine two of her favorite things, American antiques—“I live, breathe and eat antiques,” she says—and her love of Norfolk. “I love Norfolk so much, and I’m trying to help it in any way possible. I want people to come her to see our treasures.”