Picture pages, picture pages, having fun with picture pages!

By Lorraine Balint

CONNECTICUT SCENES

• Scenes of Sandy Hook, CT: a town center, built 1890's; the Sandy Hook "WTC"--- I don't know why they call it that, but I like its size; An old bridge, built 1890's; a fine Victorian home (now containing offices) with the moonrise
• The view of Rte. 8 from a park hillside; Lake Zoar
• The Long Island view mansion of Sylvester Z.Poli, co-founder of the Leows-Poli theaters
• Different derelict houses and barns in CT.
• A long, painstaking stone wall was once a fortress protecting an old saltbox on a hill in Seymour--- due for destruction, I suppose to build a clutch of McMansions.
• This, alas, no longer stands in Seymour, CT, since the place went out of business.
• Hard work went into this stone wall and the saltbox house behind it; however, the house was slated for demolition.
• Two well-to-do,eccentric brothers built or re-vamped a collection of unusual buildings and left the property to the Town of Stratford, CT. Included are the rugged "Technocratic cathedral", the Clocktower museum (formerly a hay barn), a fancy garage; A "basilica" with a stone pulpit and an organ house; and a blacksmith shop with 44 corners
• The original tollbooth from the Stratford-Milford bridge on the Merritt Parkway; The gardens at Boothe park
• Grindstones and stone slab at Boothe Park
• The planetarium and former caretaker's house, now under repair after damage by stray animals allowed in by the caretaker
• The main headqauarters though not the Boothe homestead, and the train station building
• The pretty, now-non-denominational Chapel, of which the Boothes' ancestors were a few of the founding members.
• Eric Sloane, whose most famous work is the mural inside the Air and space Museum in Washington DC, was interested in pioneer buildings and tools. He built a replica of a cabin, and collected the tools. After his death, his widow allowed his studio to be taken apart and re-assembled near an old pig iron mine on Rt.7 in New Milford that also interested him. Sloane's ashes are buried in the garden.
• Another case for Art Bell? Well, I took these pictures of the mine at the Sloane complex about 5 feet apart at different angles to the sun.
• Taken from a scenic pullover spot in Ridgefield. Looks very primitive with all those sumacs.
• Assembled from two photos of an autumn field.
• One-room schoolhouse, built circa 1850, and used as living history classroom for local schoolchildren, until a storm wrecked the roof. I guess, though nobody apparently has the funds to fix it, they don't have the heart to tear it down, either.
• The fascinating messed-up barnyard of eccentric junk merchant and heartbroken foster parent Jan Pol, in 1981: Gaylordsville, CT. It has long since been cleaned up.
• The "monument to anger" in 1981, visible from Rte. 7.
• The legend on the cross leaning against the tower, 1981.
• The above photos are from the Danbury News-Times, May 3, 1981, taken by Patrick Reilly.

NEW YORK SCENES

• A lovely old home before it bit the dust--- I risked arrest to take this picture (trespassing, possible vandalism, larceny, you name it.) Convinced the cop I just wanted pictures--- of the OUTSIDE!
• The long, long diner off Rte. 84 near Newburgh.
• The uniquely-decorated diner in White Plains, NY.
• The beautiful little Mahopac, NY, Methodist church, established in 1827.
• Scenes from the quaint little Hudson River stronghold, now groomed to attract tourists--- a restaurant, an old hotel, the brick buildings
• American Legion hall, a glassworks, Beacon Mountain rising at the end of the main street.
• Two views of the Van Wyck Homestead, which, with its 18th-century owner, figured in both the Revolutionary War and a novel by James Fennimore Cooper; Madame Catharina Brett's 1704 house--- she was a spunky and independent widow who raised her sons alone and built upon a fortune for them; The well-known all-stone house in Fishkill, NY, now an antique shop.
• I don't know what this house is, or why it's called that. It's just part of the local color down by the tracks in a small town in NY.
• Views of the historic FishKill Dutch Reformed parish, est. 1710, and the pretty parsonage. This church was used in the Revolutionary war as a prison; Patriot prisoner, Enoch Crosby, was permitted by sympathetic jailers to escape a likely hanging.
• The back of the church, set within a graveyard used for 200 years (a new parish center and school sits right among the graves; the church is in the busiest intersection of town.)
• Inscription over the door of the tiny Fishkill Episcopalian church. This church, just a 1/4 mile from the Dutch reformed church, was a hospital during the Revolution.