The 8:08 from New Canaan—and the editor who rode it

What came home on the train

Hello New Canaan,

Imagine having a commute of a few steps before the commute even began. Maxwell Perkins could walk from his New Canaan home to the station, catch the 8:08, and head to his publishing job in Manhattan.

Perkins was the editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe—one of the figures celebrated in the Library’s Changemakers tribute. The National Register nomination for his house records his return on the 6:02, carrying a briefcase of manuscripts and proofs. He and his family moved to 63 Park Street in December 1924. In a letter to Fitzgerald, he described their house as having the “face of a Greek temple” and the “body of a spacious New England farmhouse.”

The building had already lived several lives: built in 1836, it later served as a boardinghouse and then a private grammar school, a predecessor of New Canaan Country School. Before it became a literary editor’s family home, it had accommodated people coming to town and children growing up here. These train times belong to the historical account, not today’s timetable. Read the National Register history.

That briefcase gives a human scale to a much bigger change. The railway connected a household here with a working life elsewhere. To understand how New Canaan became that kind of place, go back before Perkins arrived.

The Museum & Historical Society describes a town whose downtown had been shaped by shoemaking. In 1866, local businessmen financed a railroad spur from Stamford to attract businesses and employment. The line opened in 1868, according to the National Register account.

Yet improved access also drew people looking for a retreat. The Museum traces a progression from easier travel to large summer estates, then to summer visitors becoming permanent residents and encouraging friends and family to follow. A project meant to strengthen the town’s economy helped change its residential life too. The Museum’s town history tells that broader story.

One of those connections between city work and country life belonged to sculptor John Rogers. While living in New York, he kept a weekend home on Oenoke Ridge. His children and horses became models for his work; the Museum connects those subjects with his enjoyment of country life.

Rogers made art for a remarkably broad audience. The Museum estimates that Americans bought about 80,000 of his plaster sculpture groups between 1860 and 1893, at an average price of $14. His subjects included military scenes, theater and ordinary domestic life. Humor mattered: a child quietly moving a checker piece with a toe, for instance. These were small stories a household could recognize and display.

His 1878 studio, designed by Peabody & Stearns, had an enormous skylight. He and his family moved permanently to New Canaan in 1897. The studio was later moved to the Museum campus, where his work remains on display. Explore the Rogers Studio history.

Perkins’s briefcase and Rogers’s skylight make useful companions. One points toward work brought home from the city; the other toward work shaped by life here. They offer two ways to think about a house beyond its facade: as a place that made a particular daily life possible.

The historic station photograph above captures another chapter of that connection. Wikimedia Commons dates this Library of Congress image to 1910. Look at the railway cars and the overhead wires: the infrastructure is part of the town’s story, alongside the homes it helped make accessible.

A different way to look at Saturday’s houses

That is the question to carry into a house tour: what kind of life did this building make possible?

An architectural style can tell you something. So can a building’s changing use, its relationship to a street, or the way its owner divided work and home. The Park Street house is especially instructive because its history includes lodging, schooling and family life. A single address can hold several versions of a town.

On Saturday, October 17, the Museum’s Historic House Tour runs from 1–5 p.m., with the listing giving 13 Oenoke Ridge as the starting location. General admission is $165. Transportation to the featured homes is included, along with a closing reception and light bites at the Roger Sherman Inn. Docents accompany the buses, and a docent and an architect host each home.

Ask the guides about the people as well as the rooms. Was a house built for seasonal use or year-round living? Did later occupants change its purpose? What feature would its first owner recognize—and what would surprise them?

Those are prompts for exploring each property’s own history. The organizer has not identified the private homes in its public listing, so this story does not imply that the Perkins house or Rogers’s home is on the itinerary.

Tour details · Ticket page and current availability.

Elsewhere this week

What brought your family here?

A summer visit that turned into a move? A job, a school, a house, or someone who said you should take a look?

Reply with one detail from your family’s arrival in New Canaan. We would like to bring real local memories into future issues alongside the archival record, with permission and attribution.

For more plans through Wednesday, October 21, see our full events calendar. If you are introducing a friend to town, our New Canaan day-trip guide helps put a visit together.

Shop New Canaan Association