Historic Barns of Connecticut

Designations

• National Register
• State Register

Historic Significance

Excerpt from Sanford Road National Register Historic District Nomination No. 93000657:

Five of the six associated outbuildings frame the farmyard. (See Exhibit A for their approximate location.) The larger gambrel-roofed barn (30* x 60’) has a banded, vertical board silo on its south elevation and a stone and brick foundation (Inventory #4; Photograph #9). Rebuilt in 1924 and oriented with the ridge running with the path of Sanford Road, it originally had its gable end facing the road. The smaller barn of the same roof type dating from 1930 is located to the rear of this building (Inventory #5). 
The older nineteenth-century barn consists of two gable-roofed sections set at 90° to each other; part of it may be contemporaneous with the house (Inventory #2; Photograph #s 7, 10). It is located behind the house, as is the privy (Inventory #3). Farther west is the chicken coop and across the brook, accessed by a plank bridge, is the smokehouse, which is still in use (Inventory #s 6, 7; Photograph #10). An early twentieth-century cidermill, powered by a gasoline engine, once stood next to the road on the west side of the farmyard but there are no visible remains.

A complete inventory list of buildings in the district follows:

Inv. Inv. of Resources # Addresss Name/  Style or Type/Date C/NC

1.  480 Sanford Road Benjamin Osborne House,  Cape,  c. 1810 C

2.  barn, c. 1810 and c. 1850 C

3.  privy, c. 1900 C

4.  barn with silo, 1924 [reconfigured]  C

5.  barn, 1930 C

6.  chicken coop, early 20th century C

7.  smokehouse, late 19th-century C

8.  487 Sanford Road Ephraim Stiles House, Cape, c. 1785 C

9.  wellhouse, c. 1926 C

10.  outdoor living room, screened and roofed, c. 1940   NC

11.  shed, c. 1920 C

The Sanford Road Historic District is a cohesive entity that contains significant examples of rural vernacular domestic architecture dating from the founding of the United States and a large body of associated well-preserved contributing outbuildings, which illustrate at least a century of agrarian practice. While the district’s early historical associations embody the more traditional familial patterns of the agrarian economy of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it achieved its greatest significance in the early twentieth century through its association with two fundamentally different yet harmonious cultural phenomema which had an impact on the rural landscape: the influx of both European immigrants amd urban dwellers. Further significance in this period is derived from its association with Gladys Bagg Taber (1899-1980), a noted author and columnist.

The outbuildings of the Osborne farmstead have exceptional integrity and are important contributors to the district not just for their historic rural ambiance, or as a rare surviving collection of many different building types which are exceptionally well maintained, although these inherent qualities are clearly present. More importantly, they evoke the multi-purpose representative farmscape of the nineteenth century and demonstrate its functional and architectural continuance into the twentieth century (Cunningham, Section 8).

Field Notes

Adjacent farm acreage is the Southbury Land Trust's Phillips-Lovdal Farm Preserve. The farmstead house and barns are privately owned and protected by a preservation easement. Taber, Gladys Bagg (1899 - 1980) owned and lived at 487 Sanford Road. Gladys Bagg Taber (1899-1980) came to Southbury in 1934 not to farm but to enjoy the rural ambiance, purchasing the Stiles House first for a seasonal retreat, later her permanent home, which she named "Stillmeadow." Like many artists and writers in the early twentieth century, she found the Connecticut countryside conducive to her work and the majority of her writings were done there. She made some changes to the house, including the small shed-roofed ell on the south side and the replacement of the panelling of the kitchen hearth, but the land itself had an intrinsic scenic value and was left in its natural state. Although the landscaping around the house has been improved and maintained, the large acreage formerly associated with the property, now subdivided, has generally reverted to woodland; former outbuildings are gone although the foundation of one near the pond was utilized for a screened and roofed outdoor living room in 1939. The scenic quality of the brook was enhanced when a section was enlarged for a pond and wildlife habitat in 1967. Taber's descendants still use the house on a seasonal basis and her published works and mememtos are displayed there. Taber's long literary career as a columist and novelist, which was so entwined with her life at Stillmeadow, began in 1925 and continued until her death. A graduate of Wellesley, with a M.A. from Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin (where her father was a professor of geology), Taber later taught writing at Columbia and Randolph-Macon in Virginia. A member of P.E.N., the literary society, she is also included in The Authors and Writers; Who's Who: A Reference Guide. Her more than 50 works of fiction and non-fiction were published by some of the major publishers of the day, including J. B. Lippincott, later Harper & Row, and Li?tie Brown & Co. Thomas Philliponis (aka Phillips; 1885-1949) and Lena Masolsky Philliponis, immigrants from Lithuania, purchased the 480 Sanford Road property in 1916. Cunningham, Jan, Sanford Road National Register Historic District Nomination No. 93000657, National Park Service, 1993.

Use (Historic)

• agriculture

Use (Present)

• unknown

Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Demolished

n/a

Location Integrity

Unknown

Related features

n/a

Environment features

Relationship to surroundings

n/a

Building Typology

• English Bank
• Gambrel
• Other Shed

Materials

• Vertical Siding

Structural System

• Post & Beam

Roof materials

• Asphalt Shingle

Roof type

• Dutch Gambrel
• Gable
• Gambrel
• Shed

Approximate Dimensions

Large gambrel with silo: 30' x 60'

Date Compiled

10/05/2013

Compiled By

Charlotte Hitchcock

Sources

Cunningham, Jan, Sanford Road National Register Historic District Nomination No. 93000657, National Park Service, 1993.