By Marilyn May
Milford History
The Wepawaug Manor that was once on West River Street. Photo Courtesy of Elsie-Marie Clark.
The original Milford settlers in 1639 were given home lots along the Wepawaug River to build shelters as quickly as they could, if only a lean-to, before they built more substantial yet simple dwellings.
One settler, however, built a house that still stands. That is the Buckingham House on North Street. The chimney has the numbers 1639 on it for when building the house began. Like many houses of the time, the chimney and fireplaces were built first and the rest of the house was constructed around it. It took a long time to gather the fieldstones, fell the trees, saw the planks and make all the pegs to hold it all together. Fortunately, Thomas Buckingham was a carpenter by trade. This house was made to last.
Capt. Jehiel Bryan later inherited it, and today it is the home of Elsie-Marie Clark, widow of the late Tim Clark. The Buckinghams, Bryans and Clarks were all related, so the house has always been in the same family. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over more than 380 years, the house has had additions and been kept up to modern codes. Its near future is secure.
That was not true for another Clark house just across the Wepawaug River facing the North Street pond.
That was the site of an exceptionally majestic house with fluted ionic columns rising to a second story and topped by a third floor. It was the Wepawaug Manor on West River Street.
The Journal and Courier newspaper of 1897 carried the notice: “Walter M. Irving has nearly completed the new house of Fred M. Clark of Orange. When completed it will be one of the prettiest homes in Milford.”
Fred Clark was the secretary and treasurer of the Clark Everett Seed Company on West River Street, where the post office is today.
Talking about Wepawaug Manor, Elsie-Marie Clark said, “What I heard was that the house was ordered out of a Sears Roebuck catalogue.” Apparently, Fred Clark saw it, liked it, ordered it, and all the parts were delivered to his property.
As a child, “Tim (Clark) went there for Sunday dinner every week,” she said, because Fred Clark was Tim’s grandfather.
As time went on, however, later generations of Fred Clark’s family sold the manor, and it became a Christian Science reading room. Eventually it was sold to a developer.
In 1968, the manor was destroyed by what was suspected to have been arson. “The fire was started in a laundry chute, but there was no one living there at the time,” Elsie-Marie Clark said.
What was left of the manor was torn down to make way for the Founders’ Way housing development. The beauty of the manor faded into the dust of the house’s demolition.
Milford’s old houses have faced many different fates. The mansions, once so desired, became a problem.
“What to Do with Milford Mansions” read the headline in a 1952 issue of The Milford News, noting that the question would soon be addressed by the Board of Zoning Appeals. The article went on to state, “The problem facing Milford and its people was of what use to make of its large old houses.”
The question came up when an owner was seeking a permit to build four apartments in a 16-room, single-family house that had been in his family for generations. The appeal was needed because the house was in a residential zone.
At that time only single-family homes were allowed in a residential zone. Yet the old houses, the newspaper said, “are too large for the average single family of today and are not desired by prospective purchasers unless they can be converted into multiple family housing units.”
The petitioner’s request was granted. But the board knew the question would come up again, so they made an inventory of the large, old houses in town.
Real estate developers’ answer to the question of what to do with Milford’s mansions seemed to be: tear them down. Many were destroyed.
Milford lost the 1812 Falls/Hoffenberg/Clapp House in Fort Trumbull. It was a stately, red-roofed, 13-room house overlooking Long Island Sound. The city tried to buy the property, but ultimately the house was razed and a developer replaced it with condos that look like Lego cement blocks.
Milford also lost the 22-room mansion on the Thompson estate called “Morningside.” That land had been owned by the Miles Merwin family beginning in 1645 and continuing for 16 generations.
Other large houses that were torn down for various reasons were “The Linden” on the corner of West Main and West River streets; Clark’s Tavern on River Street; the Carrington House at the end of the green and the parsonage of St. Mary’s Church on the corner of Broad and High streets. All succumbed to wrecking crews, along with other big houses around the green.
The list goes on. The most recent loss to Milford was the Beard farmhouse on Washington Avenue. Fortunately, the house was taken apart and will be rebuilt in Ohio. The Beards were one of the first settlers of Milford whose land had been granted to them by King Charles of England in 1639. The property is now scheduled to become a car dealership.
There was no town zoning department until 1929, and eventually zoning changes allowed owners and developers to convert big houses into condos. Some properties fared better than others. Milford philanthropist Henry A. Taylor had a 22-room mansion that still stands on High Street because it was purchased and saved by Lauralton Hall. It is a high Victorian Gothic mansion with spires built circa 1864. Taylor had a second “cottage” at Fort Trumbull that is the largest shingle style home in Milford. It still stands at the end of Seaside Avenue as a multi-unit condo.
The same was true at Audubon Manor on Manor House Lane where the main house has more than one family living there. There are also condos on the property along an area called Audubon Close off Grinnell Street.
Some still want to tear Milford mansions down, but other developers have retained as much as possible of the original houses in making them multifamily units, as was done at the Sanford-Bristol House on North Street that is a circa 1790s double Dutch gambrel-style colonial home.
Milford has established historical districts limiting demolitions. The Milford Historic District #1 covers the North Street area up to the Boston Post Road, and there is a federal Park River plan that limits demolitions in the area stretching from the back of City Hall to the Boston Post Road. In places those two plans overlap. Meanwhile, Milford’s South of the Green Historic District #2 protects more than 200 homes south of South Broadway.
Today, homes outside the historic districts are protected. The city’s Milford Historic Preservation Commission is notified and reviews any proposal to demolish a house more than 75 years old.
Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and a member of the board of the Milford Historical Society.