The last time my sister and I took a road trip to explore, it was a snowstorm.  This time: incessant rain, which of course immediately stopped the moment we returned home.  That said, inclement weather didn’t stop us from having a good time.

The weekend started with lunch in Sandy Hook, CT with my brother Andrei and his wife Chris.  It was lovely to catch up and spend time with family.

After that, Alex and I hopped back into the car and drove to Mystic, CT the first stop on our next Guess Where Trips adventure, passing my alma mater on the way!

We arrived too late in the day to visit the aquarium or the historical Seaport (Mystic was a major ship building and whaling community early in US history), but we walked around this quaint town and to our utter surprise were able to view the 1921 drawbridge in action. This happened as we were on the main street and a clanging sound started.  The gates came down with cars and pedestrians alike stopping to admire this unique bridge in action.

This bridge, the 6^th one on the site (the original being a wooden toll bridge in 1819) is a ‘bascule’ (French for seesaw) bridge.  Listed as a historical American Engineering Record, the bridge works with two 40-horsepower electric motors that pivot the road by lifting the 85-foot moveable span weighing 660 tons.  This weight is counterbalanced by the two 230-ton concrete weights, which make up the core of the unique sight for us amateurs.

Before dinner we stopped by the Misfit Club for a drink – a must go to bar if you are in the area, as later in the night there will be music and dancing but at this early hour there were personable bartenders and lots of laughing.

Originally, we had reservations at Port of Call, a restaurant chosen due to its connection with James Beard finalists.  However, upon getting there we saw the menu was more bar food with fancy French names rather than the fine dining meal we had budgeted for.  Right next door was The Oyster Club whose menu was more to our liking. Luckily, they were able to seat us at the bar where we enjoyed an incredible meal, with superb service and great ambiance. And very handsome bartenders!

We woke up to more rain but a determined attitude.  Off we went to our first stops: Harkness State Park and Seaside Sanatorium, a building designed by Cass Gibert who also designed the US Supreme Court building.  This stop was a bust as the sanatorium was blocked off. Harkness State Park was the home of the Harkness family, with a wonderful connection to an earlier Guess Where You’ll Go trip: Stephen Harkness was a silent partner in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Corporation, and the family were huge philanthropists. In their day, they gave $200 million dollars to various causes, including my alma mater Connecticut College, which named several buildings after them. After my sister took a short walk with the dog to glance at the Harkness cutting garden, we decided this is a place to return to when weather is better.

Our next stop was a success.  The Book Barn, located in Niantic, is an outdoor oasis filled with over 500,000 used and rare books.  This is more than a store but rather a selection of quirky sheds based on themes.  The Ellis Island station is where used books ‘immigrate’ to the store.  While parents browse, kids can explore in the various playhouses, play with the various animals that roam the area and even play a giant Connect-4 game.  The rain did not dampen the experiences, just cut it short, although I was able to pick up some good children’s books for less than $1/book with my teacher’s discount.

As this is the Coastal Connection trip, there are nautical views everywhere!

Next was our favorite stop of this trip: The Florence Griswold Museum located in Old Lyme, CT.  The story begins with the Griswold family, whose father was a ship captain who sailed the world.  Due to bad investments the family’s fortunes waned, and the house was turned into a girls’ finishing school run by the matriarch.  Florence, who never married, inherited the family home as well as all its debts.  In those days, it was socially acceptable for unmarried women was to run a boarding house, which Florence did.  Opened in the late 1870’s and offering rooms at $7/week, Miss Florence’s idyllic spot rewarded vacationers from New York City seeking out quiet places to rest, especially so after the Civil War.  The real turning point came when the artist Henry Ward Ranger discovered the inspiring countryside of Old Lyme and encouraged both Miss Florence to take in him and a group of fellow artists for a summer. Ultimately, the boarding house became the hub of American Impressionist and Tonalist painters.  This artist colony thrived between 1899 and the 1930s, with over 135 American artists staying there and leaving their mark.

Today, the grounds are a wonderful museum and historical center.  There is a modern exhibition space with the ever-growing collection by the FloGris Foundation.  There are educational programs as well and visitors of all ages can participate in a daily art or craft activity. 

The gardens are stunning, the atmosphere encouraging reflection. The blooming flowers and dogwood trees glistened in the rain which, while frustrating, did not hide their absolute beauty.

We will definitely return when the weather is better.

Below are photos of the current exhibit where we learned about the history of the center and saw part of their ever-growing collection.  It was fun learning about the artwork, its connection to the Art Colony, and local contemporary artists. 

Here is some information about my favorites.

Below is a miniature painted by Lydia Longacre in 1921.  This award-winning miniaturist studied in Paris where she was taught to focus on tones and mood over narrative subject matter.  This is evidenced in this piece with its limited tones.  Ms. Longacre was one of the few professional, female artists accepted into the art colony where she studied the effects of color and light, painting here regularly until her death.

In Down Fifth Avenue, below, painted in 1915, the Impressionist Guy C. Wiggins turns the white snow into a study of blue and lavender, looking deeper into what is the white of snow.

William Bailey, was an art professor at nearby Yale, shared this etching.  At a time when Abstract Expressionism was popular, Bailey is renowned for his timeless arrangement of items not in still lives, but rather abstractions informed by imagination.  To Bailey, each object becomes a character fulfilling a role, skillfully emphasized with shading and placement.  This piece “holds a quiet power that encourages us to notice beauty and complexity in the seemingly ordinary relationships and objects of everyday life”.  This rang so true for me I was compelled to take a photo from afar and close up, as well as how the artist chose to frame the artwork.

The large canvas below, Spring Morning, was painted in 1968 by Jon Schueler.  During WWII Schueler was a navigator on B-17 bombers and his visions of the skies during missions became formative for his art.  He writes, “When I speak of nature, I am speaking of the sky, because in many ways the sky became nature to me”. It was painted when he summered in the area.

This was just a fun piece for me, called Baseball Machine by Leo Jensen (created in 1963).  While we were not allowed to touch it, it was created to emphasize that art can be an event, not just something to stare at on a wall.

The stunning beadwork creation below by Felandus Thames is called Believed to be Jenny Freeman in her Sunday Best (2024-25).  This piece was commissioned to honor those enslaved by the Noyes family (in the 1700s and early 1800s) on what is now the museum grounds.  The artist combined the photo with patterns and colors seen in the museum as well as Native and African American art.  By using beads as pixels, Thames honors Black achievements as well as using the curtain design to remind us of the caregiving by Jenny and others whose work sustained the household.  A masterpiece.

On the way to the main house, we passed the studio where one could participate in art activities and the barn where Woodrow Wilson’s canoe can be seen.  Future President Wilson and his first wife, Ellen, stayed here when she studied landscape painting.  Due to their status (president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey) they were allowed to stay here even though Mrs. Wilson was not a professional painter.

We enter the house through the back door, walking on the side porch where the self-titled “Outdoor Club” artists/residents took their meals when it was too hot and stuffy to eat indoors. I was taken by the wide door…wondering why.  For hoop skirts??

Then we entered the main house, fascinating for so many reasons.  First, it is well preserved thanks partially to the artists who, in 1910, sent Miss Florence away, and as a surprise for her re-shingled the roof, mended the chimneys, dug a well, and redecorated the grand hallway and parlor, all repairs she could not afford.  The house emanates the feeling of what the house looked and felt like when inhabited by Florence and the artists.

First we see the center hall with its mix-matched furniture. More than a passageway this was a place where Florence greeted her lodgers and shared the rules of the house, where she was able to see some artist at work and enjoy the fruits of their creativity.  It was also where people hung out and even played ping pong!

Of course, the owner of the house was a frequent subject of the painters!

The first room we visited was the parlor, a place that came alive in the evenings as artists congregated here after dinner to continue their lively conversations, play card games, challenge themselves with spelling bees, singing and theatrics.  The most interesting for me was the game they called the Wiggle Game.  One artist would draw 3 wiggles and then challenge a fellow artist to incorporate them into a complete drawing.  There were some on display!

Next up, a sample artist’s bedroom. This room was originally the formal parlor but was later converted for use as a bedroom for distinguished guests.  As soon as an artist settled in, the art supplies would be set up or strewn around the room.  The current arraignment of the room gives a real sense of being lived in.

Her sanctuary, Ms. Florence’s bedroom (below) was situated between the parlor and the dining room.  Here she was surrounded by cherished family possessions like her father’s telescope, china glazed by her sister and a winter landscape painted by her sibling as well.  Miss Florence was the consummate hostess, as this quote from a resident tells: “Already I could see she was a born hostess, with that lovely air and remarkable gift of making her guests feel it was their home and she was visiting them”. 

Miss Florence was happy, especially proud of the impact her boardinghouse had on Lyme. As she told a reporter shortly before her death, “So you see, at first artists adopted Lyme, then Lyme adopted the artists, and now today Lyme and art are synonymous.”

Upstairs the bedrooms were converted to galleries to further teach us about the work of the resident artists and how, as a visitor in 1876 stated, the “variety in the landscapes [of Lyme] would drive an artist to distraction.  It is a singular mixture of the wild and the tame, of the austere and the cheerful”.

This painting by Woodhull Adams recorded some of the changes to the house after the restorations done by the artists.  This painting, along with others, were inscribed by the artists as gifts to Miss Florence. She treasured them, honoring them with prominent places on the walls of the house.

One room was dedicated to American Impressionists, who followed the styles of Monet and Renoir but added their local touch, focusing on New England landscape and life.  As a result, outdoor sketching was a key component of the resident artists.

Of particular interest to me was learning about Henry Ward Ranger and his Tonalist Circle.  These predecessors of Impressionism focused on using harmonious hues, often just shades of a few colors, and the delicate effect of light to create vague, suggestive moods.

This painting is called Hazy Weather by Bruce Crane (1920).  He was among the American painters who visited the international artists’ colony in France working with those favoring realism.  He moved away from realistic depiction of landscapes towards a “preference for rendering subjects in an atmospheric haze”.  Crane would go on to become a leading practitioner of Tonalism.

This is Henry Ward Ranger’s Autumn Woodlands (1902).  The limitation of color adds to the mood.

We returned downstairs to the dining room, where the true magnificence of the art colony house shines. One year, one of the artists painted a panel on the dining room door.  A tradition took hold, and every year another artist would paint another panel; it was a true rite of passage; a sign of true acceptance into the art colony. The eye cannot take in the full beauty of this room.

Our last stop was in the town of Guilford, CT where the third largest collection of historic homes in New England can be found, including the oldest inhabited wood private dwelling in Connecticut as well as New England’s oldest stone structure.

The Henry Whitfield State Museum is a house built in 1639 by Puritans fleeing religious persecution in England.  The Reverand Whitfield lived here with this family, and it served both as a place of worship and a town hall before those buildings were erected elsewhere.  It was annoying that my sister’s dog was not allowed to be carried in…not because we don’t understand the need to protect historical furniture…but because the house was EMPTY, about to undergo extensive renovations.  A young historian inside shared some information and then I quickly explored the small house.

A lot of the house has been renovated over the centuries.  Most recently the house was returned to the colonial style (it was changed to a Victorian style at one point).  Only the stone exterior remains, along with the main fireplace.  Everything else was replaced with historical wood and windows, etc. taken from other homes in the New England area.

While driving to see the oldest home we passed many houses with signs on their facade indicating their age.  

These homeowners clearly have a sense of humor, as they advertise their home was built in 1924!

Then it was time to drive home with this being pretty much the view the whole way home…until of course we pulled into our apartment complex!