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Community Corner

Park Place Sits Steeped in History

The neighbors on Park Place have found a quiet oasis in 200-year-old homes.

This is part of an ongoing series about historic neighborhoods in East Haven. Previous articles featured , and .

Park Place sits like a time capsule on the eastern edge of . About the length of a football field, the street is home to seven houses and a church close to the busy traffic of Hemingway and Main streets, yet few cars pass down the street on weekdays.

While there are many homes in East Haven that are decades old, Park Place is unique in that two of the houses date to the 18th century and most of the others were built in the 19th century.

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The only modern interloper is Christ and the Epiphany Episcopal Church, which occupies a spot between the two 18th century homes. While there is nothing subtle about a church building, it has been designed in a style to help it blend with the homes on this side of the Green. 

The seven houses make up an important share of the East Haven Green Historic District, which has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. The Green sits on four acres that are bordered by Main Street, once part of the Boston Post Road; Park Street; the Old Cemetery, which dates to the 1700s; and Hemingway Street, which has a few Colonial homes, as well. 

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The house numbers on the small street start on the south end with No. 3, then proceed north with 7, 11, 15, 23, 27 and 47. The church is No. 39. 

Number 47 Park Place sits at the corner of Park and Main streets. Historians call it the Leverett Bradley home. The Bradley family history is tightly bound up with that of East Haven.

At one time, the family members were so numerous that the name Bradley was synonymous with East Haven. They had immense influence and social position from the Colonial period through the Victorian age. The Bradley Farm ran along today's River Street, which was originally known as Bradley Street. The farm was eventually sold to make way for the new East Lawn Cemetery in 1898. 

Today the home of Leverett Bradley is owned by Christ and the Epiphany Episcopal Church. After its purchase in 1990, Cathy Watts and other parishioners spent the better part of two years cleaning and refurbishing it. After that, Watts talked the church vestry into renting it to her and her son. 

“It's a wonderful house,” Watts said. “I lived on the first floor and my son, who had retired from banking in Massachusetts, lived upstairs. Eventually, he wanted to retire to live in Europe, so I moved to Woodview.” 

Watts, a New York native, came to East Haven 60 years ago as the bride of a World War II veteran who returned to his job with Safety Car Heating & Lighting. They raised three sons in their home on High Ridge. 

“I’m a volunteer at the East Haven Historical Society and a member of the Old Cemetery Board, so living on Park Place was just a wonderful experience,” Watts said. "The fireplace mantels and wall paneling are so beautiful. We painted the interior walls white to show off the details of the carpentry."

During her time there, she became good friends with Hazel Thompson Andrews, who lived at No. 27 Park Place. They were contemporaries and both members of the Episcopal church next door. 

The home at No. 27 is called the Amos Thompson House. It is considered one of the three architectural cornerstones of the Green. The other two are the Chidsey-Linsley House at 133 Main Street and the Gideon Potter House at 274 Hemingway. 

The home was built in 1771 by Stephen Thompson, who had four sons. He built a home for each of them, but this one, for Amos, is the only one that survives. At one time, the Thompsons had owned much of the land around Park Place.

The family owned the house at No. 27 continuously until Hazel Andrews died midway through the last decade. A devoted member of Christ Church, she was never seen at church services without her hat and gloves. She left her house to the Episcopal church she loved with the proviso that it not be sold until after her death. 

While she arranged things so that she didn't have to see the home leave the Thompson family, she would no doubt have been happy about the next owners of her home.

Recently, the home was purchased by Bailey Tuthill and his fiance, Rebecca Lang. 

“I was raised in a 1790s Colonial house in Massachusetts,” said Tuthill. “I went to school at Qunnipiac, and Rebecca is finishing a master’s in nursing here. So, since we’re planning to be around for a while, this seemed like a great project.” 

Rife with termite damage, foundation problems, and a deteriorating addition, the house has needed extensive repair for some years. None of this seems to daunt Tuthill, who admires the multiple fireplaces, relatively high ceilings and spacious original rooms. He works alongside his building crew as they rip out and repair. 

“We want to expose the beam ceilings and open up the enclosed front area so that it’s more like the original house,” Tuthill said. “It’s just not that often you have a chance to buy something with this much character. You can't replicate something like this - it was built with wood that was cut 250 years ago. So many of these great homes have been torn down.” 

The house next to Tuthill, at No. 23, belongs to Aquin Valentino, an architectural designer. This house is also undergoing reconstruction.

“I bought this house in 1954 and started making changes,” he said. “I’m just about finished, though.” He thinks he will finally have all the trim work completed by mid-September.

The house was built in a cottage style that makes it an interesting  contrast to the Colonial and Victorian houses on the street. 

“My neighbor, Mrs. Andrews, who was the last of the Thompsons, told me this house was built as a result of an argument in the Thompson family. She said one of the Thompsons built it out of spite,” Valentino said. 

That may well explain the vastly different style of architecture. 

Moving down the street, we come to three nearly identical Queen Anne-style houses that were constructed at 3, 7 and 11 Park Place about 1885 by the Chidseys. They were another of the families that were prominent in East Haven history from its earliest days. Like the Thompsons, they were also a family that built houses for family members.

Finally, No. 15 Park Place is a Queen Anne and Colonial Revival-style duplex built in 1910 - also by the Chidseys. 

This was the same family that built the Chidsey-Linsley Cape Cod at 133 Main Street, diagonally across from the Bradley House. Abraham Chidsey and his family settled in East Haven in 1656. This house is built on the foundation of a previous home. That one was probably built by Deacon John Chidsey, a tanner and shoemaker, in 1681.

There are currently two building dates put forth for this house. One date is 1750 and the other is 1796. The dispute in dates seems to hinge on the size and shape of the nails used. While historians battle over the nails, we are assured that it is one of the three most architecturally significant houses on the Green. 

Part of its charm is the door built into the east side of the house that is known as the "coffin" or "funeral" door. It was used for removing residents from the parlor to the burying ground. The house is thought to be the only one in the area that kept this feature.

Park Place, with its historic conclave of homes and gigantic shade trees, has a tranquility and elegance far different from Hemingway Street on the west side of the Green. 

However, in early maps, it was called Canoe Street, probably because of people trekking down to the river to launch canoes. As time went on, the common ground across the way that served for market days, political rallies, fairs and concerts, became more manicured and park-like. It acquired a bandstand and numerous trees dotted the area. 

By 1903, when the Town Council named 19 official streets and put up signs, Park Place had achieved its much more dignified name. If you subscribe to the theory that the mantle of age usually lends dignity to everything, it’s safe to say that there is no more dignified a street or group of houses than those found on Park Place. No doubt, those farm families of yesterday would be amazed at how gentrified their homes have become. 

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