This charming house, still standing on the west side of Litchfield Rd., was built in 1905 for Richmond Paine, the newly appointed conductor of the Litchfield County Choral Union (LCCU). Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel engaged the architect Ehrick Rossiter to design the house for Paine as well as the Music Shed for performances by the LCCU, which they had founded. Those concerts eventually turned into a three-day music festival held annually in June, which regularly drew an audience of 2,000 to the Shed and frequently made headlines in The New York Times. The Stoeckels invited legendary composers to premier works at the festival. Finnish composer Jean Sibelius made his only appearance in this country at Norfolk to conduct his new orchestral work The Oceanides, as well as Finlandia, on June 4, 1914. A day earlier, Paine had directed the Choral Union, numbering 415 singers, in a performance of Handel’s Messiah, which reportedly delighted Sibelius. The LCCU still performs in the Music Shed, continuing a tradition that began over a century ago.

—Ann Havemeyer