Harwinton House Sign Temporarily in Storage
You may have noticed that the thermometer monitoring fund-raising for the Harwinton House project has been removed from the bottom of Bentley Drive. The sign is in storage while grant money and new fund-raising efforts are pursued.
Harwinton House was built in Harwinton in 1795 by Loyalist Stephen Graves. In 1931 the house was dismantled and rebuilt in New Canaan. When the family that owned the property in 2010 decided to build a new home on the property, the older adjacent house was schedule to be demolished A New Canaan group with an interest in preserving history alerted Harwinton officials who quickly arranged to have the house disassembled and returned to Harwinton where it is stored in trailers as fund-raising continues. The project to rebuild the house is expected to cost about $500,000. Toward that goal, $250,000 to $300,000 must be raised to finish the effort.
The Harwinton House Committee, which has been working for about three years on plans to rebuild the house, will be suspended by the Board of Selectmen once the architect phase is complete. This should be by the end of this calendar year. Suspension of the nine-member committee is expected to continue until resources or grants are pursued through the Board of Selectmen to fund the full project.