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      COLONIAL FRAMEWORK

      MAIN STREET, SOUTH WINDSOR

      Blessed with some of the most fertile soil in New England, the Connecticut River Valley developed into a flourishing agricultural region by the eighteenth century. Prosperous farming towns lined the river from Connecticut through Massachusetts and into Vermont and New Hampshire. One piece of this world survives in South Windsor, on the east side of the river. Here, Main Street, the old riverside road, has been bypassed by modern-day U.S. Route 5, leaving a historic landscape that extends for nearly five miles.

      South Windsor was settled by inhabitants from Windsor on the west bank in the late seventeenth century. The southern part of the Main Street corridor eventually became a community called Windsor Farms. To the north, separated from Windsor Farms only by a gully and a dip in the road, East Windsor Hill grew up around a ferry landing where merchants shipped agricultural products to New York and the West Indies and received imported goods to sell to the local population. Some of these businessmen made fortunes and built splendid mansions like that of Ebenezer Grant (place 87).

      Windsor Farms didn’t produce mansion-level wealth until well into the nineteenth century, when tobacco became the Connecticut Valley’s most important agricultural product (see the tobacco farms in place 26). Tobacco money made possible a building boom that began in the 1840s and continued well into the twentieth century. Consequently, the grandest houses in Windsor Farms date to that period and are noticeably more fashionable than farmhouses built at the same time in many other parts of Connecticut, where most agriculture was less lucrative after the mid-1800s.

      Impressive as they are, the great houses are only a part of a bigger picture. Also of note are the rows of trees that line the street, the barns and other outbuildings (particularly tobacco sheds), the warehouses and stores, and the workers’ homes and boardinghouses. Suburban infill is on the increase but for the moment remains largely unobtrusive.

      Most important to note is the land itself, stepping up and back from the river in a series of terraces. The first is alluvial plain, containing fertile sediment and devoted almost entirely to cropland, now as it was three hundred years ago. A steep bank leads to the second tier where the street runs, safe from flooding, and where most of the buildings are concentrated. Beyond them are more fields and then another rise, up to the level of Route 5.

      This topography determined the shape of the settlement. The inhabitants divided the land into narrow strips, running east from the river, which gave each property owner a bit of each type of land: fields for crops, a home lot on the street, and pasture and woodland farther in. The pattern is still visible from the air in the parallel field divisions and roads running back from the river. Older than surviving structures, this agricultural landscape still provides the framework for South Windsor’s present-day life and development—a living inheritance from colonial days.

THE PLACE

      WINDSOR FARMS AND EAST WINDSOR HILL

      1630s–present

      Main Street from North King Street to Ferry Lane, South Windsor

      FURTHER READING

      Cunningham, Jan. “East Windsor Hill Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places, reference number 86001208, listed May 30, 1986.

      ———. “Windsor Farms Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places, reference number 86000723, listed April 11, 1986.

      Ward, Gerald W. R., and William N. Hosley Jr., eds. The Great River: Art & Society of the Connecticut Valley, 1635–1820. Meriden, Conn.: Stinehour Press for the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1985.

      FIGURE 61. Main Street, South Windsor, aerial view, ca. 1985. National Register of Historic Places

      FIGURE 62. 1146 Main Street, South Windsor, ca. 1850 (demolished). Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation

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      GARDEN BY THE SEA

      EOLIA (HARKNESS MEMORIAL STATE PARK), WATERFORD

      The summer home of Edward Harkness and his wife, Mary, Eolia was one of the last and grandest estates built on the Connecticut shore between the Civil War and World War I. The mansion, surrounded by elaborate gardens, sits on 235 sprawling acres. Despite this splendor and despite their wealth (Harkness’s father was a silent partner of John D. Rockefeller), local lore maintains that the Harknesses were modest and unassuming people, more interested in philanthropy than display.

      Although the buildings are grand, the real reason to see Eolia is its landscape. Parklike grounds surround the house, and the original entry drive winds through stone-walled fields, orchards, and pastures dotted with barns, greenhouses, stables, and other estate buildings. All this makes it clear that Eolia was not only a summer retreat but also a working farm that supplied food for the Harknesses both when in residence here and at their home in New York City.

      At the heart of the landscape are extensive gardens, which Mary Harkness closely supervised. The original plan, by the Boston landscape firm of Brett and Hall (with contributions by Lord and Hewlett, who designed the house, and later modifications by James Gamble Rogers, who remodeled it), was strongly symmetrical and relied heavily on architectural features such as walls and pergolas. Plantings, equally formal, consisted of rows of annuals in bright colors.

      After 1919, Mary Harkness turned to Beatrix Farrand to redesign the gardens. Farrand (1872–1959) was one of a number of women who broke into landscape architecture by designing gardens for the wealthy. Her first work at Eolia was the Asian-inspired East Garden, intended to display statuary that the Harknesses collected on their travels. In the West Garden, she replaced the rigid rows of annuals with drifts of perennials in softer colors. The use of billowing,

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