Undoubtedly the most well-known food to come out of Mystic, Connecticut is pizza, thanks to the 1988 movie Mystic Pizza starring Julia Roberts…
The real-life pizza shop that inspired the film is still serving up hot pies every day in this beautiful, bustling, historic port city, but there’s a long-standing tradition of other delicious New England fare that has made Mystic, CT a go-to source for memorable cuisine too. The recipe featured here today might not be the star of a feature film but it definitely will be a star on your holiday table. Today’s post comes from The Mystic Seaport Cookbook, a collection of historic New England recipes first published in 1970 by Lilian Langseth-Christensen…
You might remember this cookbook from last Spring when we featured a hot rum toddy and a story about sailors and life on the high seas.
This guy was the star of our hot toddy post.Hot Grog – Mystic Seaport style
The recipe we are featuring here today isn’t quite as dramatic as that one, but it is equally delicious. Simply called Cranberry Relish, it’s an ideal alternative to canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and travels the rest of the holiday season with tantalizing appeal. Post-Turkey Day, this simple New England cranberry relish becomes a crimson-colored companion to all sorts of festive Christmas party hors d’oeuvres, holiday-themed sandwiches, and cozy winter snacks.
A 19th-century cranberry farm located in Mansfield CT. Image courtesy of the Mansfield Historical Museum and Library.
Back in the 19th century, Connecticut was home to a number of cranberry farms, but it isn’t known for its commercial cranberry bogs anymore. In New England, that’s left up to the neighboring state of Massachusetts now, where they harvest over two million pounds of cranberries per year. Some farms in the Bay State have been run by generations of families that stretch back over 150 years. Thanks to modern machinery, cranberry farming is an easier endeavor but back then it was considered one of the hardest crops to farm and was done entirely by hand with wooden scoops combed through the cranberry bushes. No one was spared the arduous task of collecting cranberries, not even kids.
Cranberry harvesters on Cape Cod circa 1909.Cranberry Farm – Pemberton, NJ circa 1910. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.A wooden cranberry scoop, also sometimes referred to as a cranberry rake. Image courtesy of a 1940s-era American Cranberry Exchange recipe booklet.
In Connecticut, there is just one remaining cranberry farm in the state left, but cranberry relish has been a part of the New England diet and therefore, the Connecticut diet, since colonial days when indigenous tribes taught early settlers how to pound them into pastes and sauces.
Harvested during the autumn months of September and October, by the time they make an appearance on the Thanksgiving table in the form of relishes, jellies, jams, compotes, sauces, and innumerable baked goods, cranberries add bright color, dimension, and acidic flavor to a holiday meal mostly recognized by its earthy brown and beige shades.
A cranberry recipe cooking booklet courtesy of the American Cranberry Exchange, headquartered at 90 West Broadway, New York, NY. The A.C.E. was a cranberry cooperative that operated between 1907 and 1957 among several US states including Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, and New Jersey.
Pick up any New England cookbook, and the author will have their own preferred method of making this holiday side dish, but there will always be some ingredients that everyone agrees on. Technically, what differentiates cranberry sauce from cranberry relish is the cooking process. Cranberry sauce generally tends to be cooked on the stovetop – boiled down with sugar to a sweetened consistency that is thin and syrupy or thick and gelatinous depending on the amount of cooking time. Relish, on the other hand, more often than not, is mixed together in a blender and served chunky and raw with the addition of just a bit of sugar and some other aromatics including spices and citrus. The recipe featured here today is a cross between both. It’s cooked on the stove and includes citrus, raisins, and nuts for a more chutney-like consistency. The chunky texture and quick cooking method, make this Mystic recipe easy and versatile – ideal for all sorts of applications long after the Thanksgiving meal has been enjoyed.
First, we will look at the cooking method and then we’ll dive into the number of different ways to serve this version of cranberry relish. You’ll notice at the end, that this recipe offers a canning suggestion for storage but we just made one big batch and stored it in the fridge where it lasted for over a week and a half.
Cranberry Relish
From the Mystic Seaport Cookbook circa 1970
Makes 6 pints
6 cups fresh cranberries
1 cup cold water
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cup raisins
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
2 large oranges
4 cups sugar
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Wash the cranberries and pick out any remaining debris (stems, leaves, etc). Boil them in a cup of cold water until the skins pop and the berries become soft.
Blend them into a puree using a hand-held immersion blender…
and then add the boiling water, raisins, walnuts, and sugar. Peel the oranges and dice the pulp. Scrap any white pith off the orange rinds, discard the pith, and dice the orange rinds. Add the rind to the mixture.
Next, stir in the grated lemon rind, and cool the relish.
Transfer relish to a bowl and serve or store in an airtight container in the fridge or pour into jars. If storing in jars, seal the jars with melted paraffin wax and shelve for a later date.
A lovely addition to the holiday table, this cranberry recipe contains the best of both worlds when it comes to sauce and relish. It’s syrupy but also chunky. It’s sweet but also tangy. The walnuts give it a satisfying dose of substance and protein. The citrus adds a burst of flavor that keeps the palate notes fresh and bright.
One of our favorite ways to serve Cranberry Relish is poured over a wedge of Brie cheese.
Naturally, it pairs well with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy but we also love it when it is heated up and spread piping hot over Brie cheese and served alongside an assortment of crackers. Post-Thanksgiving, we like to spread this relish on bread just like mayonnaise for turkey sandwiches. Add it to the filling of turkey pot pie and the dish becomes more savory in an instant. Spread it on leftover Thanksgiving dinner rolls and serve it alongside eggs for breakfast or add it as a topper to oatmeal or yogurt. It’s also great on grilled burgers – beef, chicken, turkey or vegetarian. Basically, any place where you might like a little dollop of a sweet condiment, this one works wonders.
There’s no end to the zillion ways you can incorporate Thanksgiving leftovers into new and creative foods. That’s really the beauty of the holiday after all, isn’t it? All that cooking done days ahead of time allows a rest post-holiday with minimal meal-making effort required, except for quick reheats of the feast that keeps on giving. That leaves plenty of time to relax, read a book, enjoy your friends and family, play games, go for a walk, watch a movie. Perhaps after reading this post, Mystic Pizza will be on the viewing schedule. And maybe, depending on how adventurous you are in the kitchen, this cranberry relish might just inspire a new type of pizza topping too – Mystic style.
If you are looking for more vintage recipes to augment your Thanksgiving menu, we also recommend colonial-style Corn Pudding from the Williamsburg Cookbook and Homemade Citrus Cider from the 1989 Southern cookbook, Wild About Texas.
Hope you find this recipe just as delicious as we did. If you have any favorite cranberry sauce recipes, please feel free to include yours in the comments section. Cheers to the cranberries and all the cooking creativity they inspire.
A 1930s advertisement for Eatmor Cranberries from the American Cranberry Exchange.
You might not suspect that a lot could occur in a greenhouse over a two-week period, but this time off for the Christmas break equaled quite a bit of unexpected change in our little house of wonder.
We had some pretty dramatic outdoor weather over the holiday with the lowest of lows being 6 degrees one night and the highest of highs being 58 during the day just this past Wednesday. It was a wide swing of weather for certain, but it provided a good fourteen days of observation to draw some enlightening information.
Frozen ground, ice streams and patchy snow covered our landscape during Christmas week.
First off, the few nights of single-digit weather created a bit of havoc. It also shed some new light on an ongoing topic. Do you remember the haybale conversation from The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #3?
Well as it turns out, first-hand experience is an excellent advisor. I can see now how the haybales would have been helpful through the cold snap. Like everybody across the country during Christmas week, we experienced the freezing polar vortex temperatures with daily highs between 9-19 degrees and nightly lows between 6-12 degrees. The indoor temperatures in the greenhouse on these coldest nights, with the heater going full blast, hovered in the high 30s and low 40s, which was pretty good considering the chilly weather. The coldest area of the greenhouse was the pea gravel floor which is where the broccoli, marigolds, aloe, mint, thyme, tarragon, basil, rosemary and geranium pots sit.
Although the sun came out on most of these single-digit days, one night in particular the wind picked up and grabbed hold of a small section of the plastic covering the door frame. It was a strong enough wind to open up a small gap between the plastic and the poly carb door, so that cold air could seep in through the greenhouses’s most vulnerable area. That night the windchill forced the outdoor temperature to sway between 0 and 1 degree. Inside, the greenhouse the temperature fell to 34 degrees – the danger zone. Some problems arose.
While there was never actually any frost inside the greenhouse, there were signs of distress on the leaves of the zinnias, broccoli, mint, thyme, geraniums, aloe, basil, marigolds and tarragon. Withered plants one shelf up from the pea gravel included the tomato, the Santaka pepper seedlings, the rabbit ear cactus, the pincushion flowers, and most unfortunate of all, Liz Lemon, who had made such great strides just the week before. Everything else located the next shelf up (about 2 1/2 feet off the ground) and higher was completely unaffected. Thankfully, heat rises.
The unhappy tomato.
Had the haybales been placed around the outside of the greenhouse, they might have added just enough insulation to protect the plants sitting at ground level. The other thing we could have done was just to put all the ground plants up higher in the air so they would be protected by the rising warmth from the heater. So two lessons were learned…
Add haybales around the exterior during extreme weather dips or…
Move the plants up higher in the greenhouse to capture the rising warmth.
Luckily, the extreme weather only lasted for a few days.
The trickiest part of greenhouse management so far, is that there is so much conflicting information online and so much variation between agricultural zones and particular weather situations each year that there seems to be no definitive right or wrong way to care for your own greenhouse. Except by watching and waiting and recording how your greenhouse acts in your particular environment. What is expert advice on one site is a disaster on another and vice versa. It’s never my intention to “sacrifice ” a plant but this time spent learning is proving to be really valuable in understanding not only how things grow, but also what things grow in a New England greenhouse in the middle of the winter.
In continuation of our year of waiting and watching, the withered plants were left alone to see if they might perk back up again as the weather warmed throughout the week. The severely affected plants on the floor level received a trim, removing all damaged leaves in hopes that they might heal themselves.
On the good news front, most of the plants bounced right back including the withery, weepy, unhappy tomato branch clipping who is now getting ready to offer up more cherry sized tomatoes…
But on the bad news side, three never recovered. We lost the basil, the zinnias and the marigolds, all plants that really crave that warm summer sun. As discouraging as it was to see these carefully tended plants go, not all was completely lost on them. Their stems and stalks were added to the leaf mold piles (another garden experiment started last fall) and will contribute to the joy and beauty of the garden come spring, just in a slightly different, more composted way now.
Layered leaf mold stacks – our soil amendment plan for the spring garden beds.
It was a good reminder that nothing lasts forever and that there is an ideal season for everything. Sometimes one just isn’t meant to meet the other. The great thing about nature though in times like this, is that it wastes no time moping. With the lost plants now removed from the greenhouse, there was more room for what was growing well to spread out in their vacant spots. As if to add some cheer to the atmosphere, everything that could send out a bloom between Christmas and New Year’s Day did…
Clockwise top to bottom: geranium, broccoli, nasturtium, lemon.
The broccoli infact was so quick to flower, it burst into bloom before I had a chance to harvest it for dinner one night. Exploding into a pom-pom of butter yellow flowers, it became a feast for the eyes instead of the belly. That’s fine by me. Broccoli produces one of the most beautiful, delicate flowers of all the garden vegetables, so it is a joy either way. The nice thing about broccoli also, is that its leaves are edible. We might not have enjoyed the spears but the leaves are next on the menu if the broccoli doesn’t send out any new shoots.
Broccoli leaves!
Also on the harvest list is the bell pepper. Currently, it’s measuring in at just under 4″ inches in length – close to mature size that makes it ready for picking soon. This pepper comes with an added dose of mystery included too. Last summer, we grew two varieties of bell peppers in the garden. Adored by slugs, bunnies and maybe a vole or two, the pepper beds were constantly being reseeded and defended all summer.
Out of time, but not yet fully grown, just before the fall frost I transplanted three of the strongest plants to see if they would continue growing in the greenhouse. Two of the three were hot pepper plants of the jalapeno and chile variety and then the third plant was a bell pepper. I thought I had transplanted an heirloom variety called California Wonder, which if not picked when green will ripen to a deep red shade. But based on its shape right now, it could be the other pepper plant we experimented with – Orange Sun – which will as its name suggests, turn a vibrant orange when ready for harvest. In both cases, the longer the pepper sits on the vine the sweeter it gets. So a surprise is in store as we wait to see what color it turns out to be…
The other green delight that really took off on a growing adventure these past two weeks was the parsley. With no extra help or amendments, it’s doubled in height since the last diary entry. The only way I can really rationalize this growth spurt is to say that we had a little help from the gods. The ancient Greeks believed that parsley was a sign of death and rebirth.
In mythology, it gets caught up in stories surrounding the baby, Archemorus, and the parsley that grew from his blood after he was killed. Later, the Romans believed that Persophone ( the Goddess of Spring, the Underworld, and of Vegetation) was in charge of guiding souls to their final resting place in the underworld. Parsley throughout Roman times adorned gravesites and funerary objects as a gift to Persephone so that she would take good care of those that perished.
Between the demise of the marigolds, zinnias, and basil and the growth of the parsley, the flowers, the bell pepper, and the broccoli, I can’t help but think that Archemorus and Persephone were at work, guiding the greenhouse through these past two weeks of dramatic winter weather. From death springs life. And parsley too.
Bottom right: Parsley full of joy!
Cheers to weather and what it teaches us, to plants that persevere in the face of difficulty, to Persophene and Archemorus, and to this brand new year full of possibilities. Hope your 2023 is off to a beautiful start!
{The Greenhouse Diaries is an ongoing series. if you are new to the blog, catch up here with Week #1, Week #2, and Week #3 here}
Cheers to new beginnings and big news. I’m so excited to share that the Vintage Kitchen has a new home! After two years of online real estate hunting and six months on the road in search of just the right house, just the right city, and just the right amount of green space to launch a new chapter in the life of the Vintage Kitchen, we have finally landed in the beautiful state of Connecticut. Located on a tree-lined street, in a historic river town that was once one of New England’s busiest trading and sailing ports, stands this almost 300-year old-charmer…
Built in 1750, this early American colonial contains a wonderland of history that spans over 270 years. It is dizzying to think about all the culinary conversations that have bounced around these plaster walls from then til now. But to give you a little perspective, it was built twenty-six years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, nine years before Guinness brewed their first batch of beer, and forty-six years before the first American cookbook (American Cookery, Amelia Simmons, 1796) was published.
Representative of traditional Georgian architecture, it was built using a symmetrical two over two layout containing two rooms on the bottom floor and two rooms on the top floor with a center staircase running up the middle. A fireplace on one side that was used for cooking and heating purposes, and a stone foundation basement with exterior cellar doors completed the architectural footprint.
Each century afterward brought new features and new additions. In the 1800s, a bathroom was added upstairs and a kitchen was added off the back of the house. Sometime around the 1940s, electricity came to town and outlets were carved into support beams both upstairs and down. In the late 1990s, another bathroom was added on the ground floor at the back of the house along with a mudroom. I love all the angles of the graduated rooflines, especially on the sides.
In the next coming weeks, I’m hoping to find out some of the house’s early history so that a date plaque can be added to the shake siding in front with attribution to the original owner, builder or the known name of the homestead itself. We see these plaques on old houses all over Connecticut. I think they are such remarkable reminders of all the people that settled in this landscape long before us. I’m hoping with the help of the local library and historical society that there will be a bevy of interesting information discovered (more on that topic coming soon).
In the meantime, the house itself offers up its own stories in little ways every day. Many of the original 1700s features have been retained including the entire structural support system, the stairs, the fireplace, almost all the interior doors and hardware, the upstairs flooring, the exterior front door and porch, and the interior trim on all doorways. Evidence of adjustments and modifications made along the way by former occupants in the 1800s can be seen in the downstairs flooring and in the detached garage, as well as the 20th-century replacements windows, entry hall flooring, exterior doors, and the two room additions at the back that made the house a bit more convenient for modern living.
While the whole house is a marvelous example of domestic progress as American homes evolved over the course of three centuries, and structurally it is in great shape, as is the case with most historic homesteads, it does need a bit of extra care, love and attention these days. Luckily, all the previous occupants who have spent time within these walls have kept their improvements relatively simple and in keeping with the house’s history, so there is nothing that needs to be demolished or taken down. Some cosmetic changes, electrical updates, and renovation work will freshen things up a bit and ensure that this piece of history will be enjoyed for another three hundred years.
The most dramatic changes will come in the kitchen and the garden, as there are BIG plans for both. In a funny twist of irony, as my husband and I searched all over New England, Pennsylvania and New York for the ideal house for the Vintage Kitchen, we wound up falling in love with a home that had no kitchen. Technically there is a kitchen (two, actually if you count the fireplace – also known as the original kitchen!) but the room that was added onto for cooking in the 1800s is currently not operating as such at the moment. Taken down to the studs by the previous owner, this gutted room now offers a playground of design possibilities.
We are really excited for the challenge of making it functional for modern-day cooking while also keeping the house’s historical footprint and charm intact. Before we tackle that renovation project, in today’s post, I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite architectural details both inside and out that make this house a unique time capsule. One of the most visually impactful aspects can be seen in the kitchen in the very last image.
Front door mailboxCellar doors… how many canned goods and food bushels have passed through there in 272 years?Original interior doors and hardware circa 1750Ultra-wide original 1750 floorboardsA property boundary marker from 1904Original 18th century front door and hardwareOriginal 1750 staircase The weathervane needs a little repair but it’s still a beauty no matter what direction it points. Original 1800s era kitchen flooring One of my most favorite parts of this old house is being able to see (and touch!) the transition of wood that has held up the entire structure over the past 272 years. Had the kitchen already been renovated before we bought the house, we would have never been able to get a glimpse of the inner structural workings of three different centuries.
As each room in the house gets painted, renovated and refreshed there will be many blog updates about our progress along the way with all sorts of before and after photos. Also, if you keep up with the Vintage Kitchen on Instagram, you’ll find occasional videos posted there as well.
While there still will be a few more weeks to go until we are up and running in the cooking department and able to share new batches of vintage recipes, I am happy to announce that the kitchen shop is now back up and running. A new collection of vintage and antique items will be available beginning this week including cookbooks, coffee pots, storage containers and the cutest 1930s era cast iron doorstop, so if you haven’t visited the shop in a while perhaps you’ll find something new yet old that captures your heart.
Also, I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who stuck with us while we transitioned from our old Southern city to our new New England home. This migration took a lot longer than anticipated and presented a multitude of obstacles, but now that we are settled in our new spot that we absolutely love, the Vintage Kitchen is ready to explore and share all sorts of new and exciting culinary history. I have a feeling there will be many colonial-inspired stories to come.
If you have any helpful design ideas or advice pertaining to old house renovations please share it with us in the comments section. We welcome all information around here.
Sailors are known for their stories. You’d be hard-pressed to go to any ocean enthusiast’s house and not hear a tale of the extraordinary fish caught, or the summer storm turned sour, or the port city that lured like a siren song. But did you ever hear the story about the pineapple? The one that tells how it became one of the most iconic symbols in the world? Today in the Vintage Kitchen, we’ve got a legend on the table.
There are a few versions surrounding the pineapple and how it became known as the universal symbol of hospitality. Some stories claim it was a gift of peace offered to foreign explorers by local Caribbean tribes. Other stories state it was a sought-after souvenir traded around South America until it eventually was welcomed in Europe for experimental gardening. Another explains that it was a status symbol of the very rich and the very royal who used it as a party decoration to signify the extent of their wealth, visually reinforcing the fact that they could indeed offer the best of everything to their guests, no matter what the cost. But our favorite version in the Vintage Kitchen, of how the pineapple came to be a hospitality icon, is the one that dates to the 1700s in the time of the sea captains.
That legend states that merchant trading ships like this…
A Chesapeake Bay style sloop was a common merchant ship traveling between the West Indies and the Eastern Atlantic coast.
carried cargo (mainly sugar, tobacco, rum, and molasses) back from the Caribbean islands to various ports in New England. Included in their bounty was the exotic tropical pineapple, a fruit so unusual in its beauty, so incredible in its sweetness and so valuable in its price, it was treated delicately just like its most precious counterpart, sugar.
When the ship was back in port and safely unpacked, the captain would return home to his New England house with a pineapple in hand. He would spear this fruit on the front garden gate to signify to friends and neighbors that he had returned from his ocean voyage and was ready to entertain visitors with good stories and good food.
The centuries-old houses of Kennebunkport, Maine where many a sea captain lived.
With just the right amount of whimsy and practicality, it is not hard to see how such a story and such an action could have spread throughout the village, and then the state, and then the coastline, so that within time, hundreds of garden gates across many states were bearing pineapples – a symbol of friendly invitation, warm welcome and kind generosity.
Pineapple gates in Odessa, DE
No one yet has accurately been able to authenticate the first-time connection between pineapples and hospitality, but this sea captain story may help explain why you’ll find pineapples incorporated into outdoor architectural details all over the East Coast from Maine to Florida.
Appearing in gardens both ancient and new…
Permanent pineapples in the garden.
…history tells of America’s long-standing love affair with this hospitable fruit. You’ll see it on the front doors of old houses like this one…
The historic Hunter House in Newport, Rhode Island built in 1748.
There’s the pineapple above the door, welcoming all who enter.
and this one…
Virginia’s Shirley Plantation, completed in 1738, which boasts a three-foot tall pineapple in the middle of the roofline…
and in the decorative details of brand new, modern days houses…
Pineapple-themed door knockers, welcome signs, doorbells, and house number plaques announce an age-old symbol on brand-new exteriors.
You’ll also find them indoors…
Most often as finials on front entry staircases…
blending classic and traditional elements from past centuries to the present century…
Pineapples in all modern ways useful… ice bucket, lamp, bookends, flower vase.
Last week we added a new vintage pineapple to the shop…
This one was neither a finial nor an exterior facade detail but instead at one point in its life had adorned the top of a fountain. The fountain wasn’t as big as Charleston’s famous Waterfront Park pineapple…
Waterfront Park, Charleston SC
but she is an ideal size for many design possibilities including lighting, decoration, and display. And she carries forth the sea captain’s theme of good stories and good food in a most beautiful way.
Even though we might never be able to uncover where and how the pineapple became involved with the convivial idea of good hospitality, we still love the idea of one fruit bringing together three centuries worth of parties and people. Critics would say that the sea captain story is flawed because pineapples were expensive and traders wouldn’t put a small fortune out in plain view for anyone to steal. But hospitality is about extending and offering, not squandering and hiding, so clearly, the argument could go either way.
If you were a sailor in the 1700s, at sea for long stretches of time, with life and death equally close at hand, perhaps you needed a little frivolity upon returning home to family and friends and the pineapple provided just that. A simple yet beautiful billboard. One that symbolized rich with life lived instead of rich with monetary wealth.
Cheers to the legends that stick around and to the fruits that travel through time!
Channel your own inner sea captain and set the stage for your next night of entertainment. Find the vintage fountain topper pineapple piece in the shop here!
The Ephraim Burr Beers House, circa 1810 – Clapboard Hill, Westport CT. Read more history about this house here. Photo by Ken Staffey.
Nora Roberts once wrote “it was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years. Wasn’t it, after all, a kind of life? They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.”
Recalling those faded voices, those human experiences, those memories, the forgotten details and the covered over contributions of the places that Nora nuanced, in today’s post we are tackling a discussion about the very interesting life found in and around old houses of early America as discovered by a modern day history lover. If you are a fan of any old house photo feeds on Instagram, chances are you have come across Ken Staffey’s gorgeous account simply called House Stories.
Ken features primarily photographs of historic homes in the Northeastern United States and dives into the interesting family histories behind them with a mix of interesting facts, personal details, and quirky insights. Most often he features houses from the 18th and 19th century that tell the story of how New England grew up. The places where merchants, farmers, sea captains, doctors, writers, politicians, extraordinary people and everyday citizens raised their families and found their footing among the blooming new frontier called the United States.
Located in Marblehead MA, the Sandin House was built in 1714 for fisherman William Sandin and his wife Joanna. Marblehead was once deemed the greatest town for fishing in New England.
From the bones that make up the frames of these centuries-old places, Ken has pulled stories about past occupants, owners, and architects; about city plans gone awry and country enterprises gone right; about dreams found and opportunities lost, about big events and tiny details, all of which remind us how the past is still very much present in our modern daily lives. We’ve caught up with Ken interview-style to learn more about his passion and his process of bringing history home. Included are his top-picks of places to visit for any architecture enthusiast and his thoughts on where current trends are headed when it comes to living with old houses in a new world.
{Note: Ken’s house photos have been featured throughout this interview. Click on each image to read Ken’s Instagram enties.}
In The Vintage Kitchen:What ignited your idea of posting house stories on Instagram?
Ken Staffey: In the beginning, I posted random photos like everyone else. I found that the house photos seemed to get the best response. Then I started to add a bit of history along with each home and eventually it evolved into what it is today, House Stories – history told one house at a time.
This house was part of a planned community built in the 1870’s as imagined by Alexander Turney Stewart, a dry goods entrepreneur who emigrated from Ireland to New York. Read more about this house here.
ITVK: How do you decide which houses to feature?
KS: I pretty much photograph whatever catches my eye. Later the challenge of finding some history that goes with the home is a big part of the fun. Just about all the homes I have featured date from the colonial period to about 1920.
In Ken’s post about the 1871 Wells-Catlin House, in Brookline, MA he talks about the history behind the name of the town. Read more about it here.
ITVK: Explain a little bit about your process of researching these old houses. Do you find that their histories are pretty easy to obtain or do you find yourself knee-deep in archive vaults and old records?
KS: Thankfully, I am never knee deep in archive vaults and old records, but I am often in deep with virtual equivalents, which is much easier thankfully. Many old directories and records have been scanned and are now online. Usually, I will just start with the address and see what I come up with there. Often once I get past the online real estate listing for a home, I can find something interesting about the home or its early occupants. And thank God for historical societies and preservation groups that have not only saved these wonderful old homes but also recorded a good deal of their history.
Yale graduate Nathan Hale taught school in this shingled house in New London, CT in 1774, a few years before he was accused of being a spy and hung by the British Army during the Revolutionary War. The schoolhouse has been moved several times around town but through the support of the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution it is being well maintained and offers tours for visitors.
ITVK: Do you ever speak with the property owners to learn more about each house? If not, do you think that most homeowners are aware of the interesting histories their homes have?
KS: Typically I do not speak with the property owners, but I have had a good handful of requests from owners to feature their homes. They often know a bit of the history about their homes, but that sometimes can be inaccurate. One family had been retelling stories from their home’s history. Once I dug a bit, I found that the history had been twisted in the retelling over the years, so it was fun to set the record straight for the owners.
City streets and neighborhoods, in particular, are home to a slew of fascinating stories with so many people moving in and out and coming and going. Ken writes about the history of this street in NYC’s West Village here.
ITVK: Do you live in a historic house yourself? If so, does your house have a fascinating story too?!
KS: I grew up in a house that was built in 1940 and since college, I have always been drawn to apartments in older buildings, most of them over a century old. The home I now own is 89 years old and was built as part of a wave of new housing to accommodate the thousands of factory workers who found work in the once-thriving factories here in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My home is not historic and the funny thing is that I have never even tried to find any history. I do know that the same family owned the home for decades and people have told me a bit about them here and there.
ITVK: What are three things that modern architecture lacks that all these great old houses contain?
KS: I am a big fan of all types of architecture, but I am partial to the homes of the past. I think modern architecture has a style all its own, but what modern homes lack is a history and stories about the people that lived there and the surroundings. Over time even the most modern of homes will have a story to tell.
One great example of a modern house having a fabulous “new” story to tell was Ken’s post on the First Year Building Project designed by students at the Yale School of Architecture. One hundred years from now (fingers crossed that it survives that long) this house will have made a marvelous contribution to its neighborhood. Read more about the project here.
ITVK: If you could live in (or own) any one of the houses you have featured to date, which would you choose and why?
KS: I am not sure about a particular house, but I was enamored by the recreated New England village circa 1820-1830 at Sturbridge Village. It is a living museum with interpreters who go about their business as New Englanders did two centuries ago. The buildings were moved there from around New England, so you can see a village that is free of modern structures and vehicles, which gives you a good idea of life in that era. Also, you can watch the interpreters engage in activities like farming and weaving as they would in Early America.
Old Sturbridge Village – an 1830’s living history museum.
ITVK: If you could have cocktails with any famous person, living or dead, in any house in the world, who and where would you choose and why?
KS: It would be interesting to have drinks with someone from the colonial era. Many of the colonists brought the tradition from England of having beer as a drink instead of whatever and a review of their habits show that it was not unusual for them to have a beer with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The White Horse Tavern in Newport RI was founded in 1673 making it the oldest operating bar in the US. See more historic libation stations on the oldies list here.
ITVK: One of my most favorite houses you’ve featured so far is the Jonathan and Abigail Starr house in Guilford, CT that was built in 1732…
The Jonathan and Abigail Starr House, Guilford CT built in 1732.
You shared this information about the house:
“This Church Street home was built for Jonathan and Abigail Starr in 1732 on land obtained from Jonathan’s father, Comfort Starr. Jonathan was a fourth generation New Englander. His great- great-grandfather was a surgeon, also named Comfort Starr, from Ashford, England, who sailed to America aboard the ‘Hercules’ in 1634. Joining him were his wife, Elizabeth, their three children and three servants. Dr. Starr’s parents clearly had a preference for unique names. His sisters were Suretrust and Constant and his brothers were Joyfull and Jehosaphat. The Starrs of Ashford lived a comfortable life with an estate about 60 miles southeast of London, but their move may have been motivated in part by grief as the grave of their son was said to be “not yet grass-grown” when they set out from the port of Sandwich for the “Plantation called New England in America.”
Do you have any other fun details about this house in particular?
KS: I do not, but I did love the names of the Starr children. I featured the Comfort Starr house (below) a few days after the Jonathan and Abigail Starr post.
Portrait of Comfort Starr and one of his daughters alongside Ken’s photo portrait of Comfort’s house built in the mid 1650’s and a detailed side view sketch of it’s traditional saltbox style.
While known as the Comfort Starr House, this Guilford home was actually built for Henry Kingsworth around 1646. Mr. Starr, a tailor, purchased the home from Kingsworth’s heirs in 1694. He and his wife Elizabeth raised eight children here: Abigail, Elizabeth, Hannah, Comfort, Submit, Jonathan, Jehoshaphat, and Amy. The home was in the family for almost 200 years. Among the last to live here were seven Starr sisters, who were nicknamed ‘Pleiades’ for the seven sisters constellation. When the last sister, Grace, died at 83 in 1874, the home was sold outside the family. Today it is one of the oldest homes in Connecticut that is still a private residence.
ITVK:Is there one New England town, in particular, that should be on every house enthusiasts must-see list?
KS: I think that depends on what type of architecture you like. If you are a fan of first-period homes (1625-1725), Ipswich, Massachusetts has the highest concentration of those homes in the country. There are enough clustered together that it is not too hard to imagine what the area looked like centuries ago.
Ipswich, MA. Photos courtesy of the Ipswich Visitor Center.
If Victorian architecture is your thing, you could head to Willimantic, Connecticut. The town saw rapid growth as the textile mills expanded there. Because Victorian architecture was in style at the time, there are many Queen Anne homes along with other Victorian treasures. In both cases, the prevalent style reflects a period of growth followed by an economic downturn, which is why the homes were not updated or replaced with more recent styles. But those are just two examples, you can find architectural gems just about anywhere. Once you start looking, you’ll be surprised how much you’ll find.
A collection of Victorian, Greek Revival and Queen Anne styles houses that can be found in Willimantic, Connecticut
ITVK: What is your most favorite style of architecture, and why does it appeal to you?
My tastes have definitely changed to favor the simple early American homes. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said Victorian homes, but I have grown to appreciate plain design with few distractions from the colonial period. Also, the history from that period is fascinating. Life was harder in so many ways in terms of having to work hard to get things done, but there was also simplicity to life without all the distractions of today. That being said, I enjoy modern conveniences as much as anyone else, but I can appreciate a simpler existence.
In addition to telling house histories, Ken also incorporates fun facts and other interesting tidbits relating to holidays or customs or historical pop culture which keeps each post from being formulaic. Read more about this 1720 Brookfield, CT house here.
ITVK: Have you had the opportunity to look inside any of the houses you’ve featured? And if so, do you have any memorable kitchen stories from them?
A visit to Louisa May Alcott’s family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts is a treat. Because 80% of the furnishings are original to the home when the Alcotts lived there, you can see how the author and her family lived.
Orchard House – home to Louisa May Alcott. Read more about her and her house here.
They often endured lean times, but Louisa and her sisters enjoyed putting on shows for guests right there in the parlor. Upstairs, you can see the small desk where Louisa wrote her best selling books. It’s really nothing more than a shelf along the window, but it was there that she produced works that touched readers the world over.
The kitchen at Orchard House where the entire family spent time together. Photo courtesy of louisamayalcott.org
The kitchen is another wonderful window on the past. It was here that the Alcott women cooked, cleaned and drew water from the pump beneath the trap door in the kitchen floor. The author herself says, “All of the philosophy in our house is not in the study, a good deal is in the kitchen, where a fine old lady thinks high thoughts and does good deeds while she cooks and cleans.” I highly recommend a visit to this house museum.
ITVK: So many old houses revolve around the idea of family, whether they were built to accommodate them, or given as wedding gifts or passed down through generations. Because we are such a transient society these days, and on average only stay 7-10 years in a house before moving on, do you think we are slowly losing a sense of place in our modern day world that connects us to the history of our land? Do you think this is why, fundamentally, old houses still hold so much appeal and nostalgia for us?
KS: Overall we have definitely shifted to a more disposable society, but if you look more closely, there is a quieter celebration of the past. People are still restoring our treasured antique homes and many others will furnish their homes in a throwback style such as farmhouse, colonial or even midcentury modern.
This house was built in Fairfield, CT in the 1990’s but the exterior contains elements of classic French chateau, colonial and federal styles that could give the impression that it is older than it actually is. Read more about it here.
This house in Westport, CT was also built in the last 20 years. New to look old, it was modeled after early colonial designs. Read more about it here.
Also, there are more people drawn to be what we now call “makers.” They may be crafters, foodies, or designers and together they have recreated an echo of the cottage industries of our ancestors. Two centuries ago, artisans worked and sold their goods out of their homes and today there are plenty of people working, living and creating from their homes. So, I think we are more connected to our homes than we realize today.
The Roe House, built in the 1680’s, now serves as the Port Jefferson, New York Chamber of Commerce. Read more about it here.
In New York City’s Soho neighborhood this building originally hosted a tobacco shop in the early 1800’s. Now it’s a clothing store with a 19th-century murder story to tell. Read more about it here.
This house built in 1781 in Litchfield, CT has been home to a number of cottage industries throughout its life including an apothecary shop, a grocery store and now a doctor’s office. Read more about it here.
Does place dictate who we are or who we have the potential of becoming? Not always. But it certainly does have the opportunity to indulge us and to nurture our life’s pursuits just like Orchard House had done with Louisa May Alcott who drew so much of her own environment into her works of fiction. Had Louisa never grown up in that brown clapboard house would Little Women have been the same book we know today?
Orchard House photographed sometime between 1860-1920. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Images.
Like dipping your toe into the pool of history and watching the ripple effect the entire body of water, Ken’s House Stories are mini in content but mighty in impact. He shows us that behind every person stands a physical structure that was impacted by them or for them. He reminds us that a person’s individual history, although singular at the time eventually becomes our collective history as a nation. One country formed by billions of individual contributions. Big, small, humble, grand.. the old houses stand as truth showing us where we have been and where we have the potential to go.
A sampling of houses Ken has featured on House Stories that range in age from the 1670’s to the 1860’s.
A very big cheers to Ken for spotlighting the stories of our country’s founding families. Find him on Instagram here. And cheers to all the people who loved, saved and protected our early American architecture from re-development and decline and continue to do so every day.
Other historic architecture-related posts from the Vintage Kitchen can be found here…
In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat 