Norfolk Then…
The building we now know as the Art Barn, home to Yale Norfolk School of Art, was built in 1898 as a carriage house and barn for Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel. The elegant brick building was used for more than just housing horses and carriages. The Stoeckels hosted annual meetings of the Litchfield County […]
Norfolk Then …
Maple Avenue was once known as the “Highway to Judge Pettibone,” whose house is pictured on the right in this view looking north from Greenwoods Road. Judge Augustus Pettibone (1766-1847) was the son of one of the first settlers of Norfolk and represented Norfolk in the state legislature. The house eventually passed to his grandson […]
Norfolk Then…
Norfolk had a thriving economy in 1860 when this business directory was published in S.D. Northway’s Norfolk Almanac. The S.D. Northway Manufacturing Company was located in South Norfolk and produced a variety of leathers, calf skins, and hides. Its annual almanac contained the usual astronomical data as well as interesting town, county, and state statistics. […]
Norfolk Then …
An aerial photograph of Norfolk provides a glimpse of the town blanketed by snow on a winter’s day. At left, the Catholic Church designed by Alfredo Taylor still has its tower with open belfry. Next door, children play in the yard behind Center School, set well back from the road. This imposing brick structure had […]
Norfolk Then…
After the catastrophic gasoline spill on Nov. 5, a longtime firefighter remarked that the disaster was in the top three to have hit Norfolk townwide, the others being the destruction of the Hardware Store on Station Place by fire in 1987 and the flood of 1955. The Hardware Store fire was discovered at 3 o’clock […]
Norfolk Then …
In the fall of 1953, Norfolk was grappling with school regionalization. Planning for a regional high school had begun in 1951, after the Gilbert School in Winsted announced that it could no longer educate high school students from neighboring towns. Voters from each of the six towns involved—Barkhamsted, Colebrook, Hartland, Harwinton, New Hartford, and Norfolk—had […]
Norfolk Then…
While the shrill whistle and belching smoke of locomotives arriving at the Norfolk station have been replaced by the downshifting and diesel fumes of trucks on Route 44, the landscape of Norfolk is still marked by the railroad. There are track beds hidden in the woods, now used as nature trails, and bridge abutments can […]
Norfolk Then…
A Main Street landmark for many years, the Norfolk Inn stood near the corner of Shepard Road on the site of the present Norfolk Ambulance building. It provided housing for an influx of summer visitors and contained 57 rooms with accomodations for 75 guests. A carriage from the inn met all the trains. Rates were […]
Norfolk Then …
This four-story steel-framed brick building brought modern construction to Main Street in Norfolk and opened as the Wangum House in 1913, named after Wangum Lake on Canaan Mountain. Rooms were offered at 75 cents and $1, and a full-service restaurant was located on the main floor. Although there is a horse-drawn carriage parked in front, […]
