Laurel Beach Association

Written on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee Celebration -1974 -

of the Laurel Beach Association by George Barlow.

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• In the Beginning

• The Plan

• The Charter

• The Budget

• Activities

• Expansion

• Concerns

• The Casino

 

 

 

In the Beginning

In 1899, a dream was born.
The dream began in the mind of a man who admired the beauty of his neighbor's ocean-front farm. It grew with the aid of his friends, a businessman and a judge. It was shaped by a world-famous architect.

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Its continuing growth and progress have been guided by three generations of people who cared about their community enough to keep it as a unique setting, first for summer vacationing, ultimately as a fulfilling locale for year-round family living.

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In the latter years of the nineteenth century, a man from Naugatuck, J.H. Whittemore, came down the valley to the sea and bought a plot of land on the waterfront. It had a panoramic view of Long Island Sound, where the graceful curve of Connecticut shoreline was punctuated by the woodsy silhouette of nearby Charles Island. The adjoining land to the west, stretching away towards the wetlands bordering the Housatonic, was rolling, hilly ground which the Merwin family operated as a seed farm.

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But the Merwin's seed business languished in the nineties. The Naugatuck Savings Bank foreclosed its mortgage on the Merwin Farm and Whittemore acquired the property. Together with a Naugatuck business associate named Arthur H. Dayton, and a Waterbury and Devon lawyer, Judge Root, he formed the Laurel Beach Land Company to subdivide and develop the tract.

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The Plan

First they called on the considerable talents of Stanford White, the New York architect, to create the plans for a model community. His concept of using the natural land contours to the best advantage in the curving street layout and planning the community around a centrally located park has worked beautifully throughout the years. His final flourish was to design for each end of the proposed ocean-front promenade "two elegant pavilions provided with seats, from which can be obtained magnificent views of the Sound." The pagodas, as they came to be known, provided later residents with a pleasant and sociable shelter from the sun for many years.

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With White's plan in hand, the Land Company set to work to grade the land, lay out the streets and walks, build a half-mile shorefront bulkhead topped by a wood-planked promenade and finally, a pier extending 270 feet out into the sound from the boardwalk at the foot of Fifth Avenue Park. They contracted with the Milford Water Company to install water service for homes and fire hydrants. And to emphasize the summer resort nature of the project, they arranged for the construction of the Hotel Elsmere, characterized in the announcement of its opening as a "strictly first-class hotel in every respect...where large spacious verandas afford a beautiful view of the passing yachts."

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The Charter

The evidence of the developers' success in bringing their dream to life is all around us. In many places, Laurel Beach looks remarkably today like the first photographs taken when the community was brand new. But the men who founded the Laurel Beach Land Company did something that was perhaps their most important act in assuring the continuity of the quality of life here. In 1899, the Land Company applied to the Connecticut Legislature for a Charter in the name of the Laurel Beach Association.

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The application was approved. The community that now celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary was officially established.

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Basic to the Charter was the provision that anyone who buys a lot in Laurel Beach automatically becomes a fully qualified, voting member of the association. This was the kind of egalitarian thinking that established our "town meeting" form of organization three-quarters of a century ago. Laurel Beach became truly equal in 1919, when the Association petitioned the legislature for a Charter change that would give each member one vote at any meeting, regardless of the value of his property - as opposed to his property assessment. That original method gave a member, for instance, a $40,000 assessment twice the voting strength of a member with a $20,000 assessment. The legislature approved the requested change, bringing us to the even-handed self-government our Association operates under now.

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The Budget

Self-government means self-regulation and self-support too. While the original Charter gave the Association authority to tax its members, taxes would only be levied for expenses already incurred. The 1919 Charter revision allowed us to prepare a budget for future expenses, vote its approval and tax ourselves the amount of money needed to support the budget. This is the way we operate today.

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The Association budget, like family and government budgets everywhere, has increased enormously as our facilities and responsibilities have increased. Earlier residents were awesomely impressed that they devoted almost $29,000 over a 15 year period for rehabilitation of the seawall during the 1930's. But our current shore erosion control budget, which involves just our share of a major Federal, State and Local project to preserve our beach, is a $100,000 expenditure over only a ten-year period. The members voted to participate in this project in 1963 and the following year construction began on our present stone groins and sand beach.

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Most of our budget now, as it has through the years, goes for less cumbersome programs. Sports, for instance, have always been a major part of every summer season's activities, ever since the founders promised prospective lot buyers that "amusement lovers of out-of-doors sports will find tennis courts, croquet grounds, etc. Salt water bathing can be enjoyed to the fullest extent..."

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Activities

Little did these gentlemen realize that in the years ahead, "salt water bathing" would come to mean the fierce competition of floundering four-year olds in kickboard races, the struggles of teens racing each other for the Mayer Cup, or the wildly carnival atmosphere of the World's Greatest Tub Race, featuring Dave O'Connor versus Willard Steinkamp in an annual regatta that grew more hilarious every year.

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Tennis was always popular and has attracted more and more participants in recent years. The first Laurel Beach Tournament was held on dirt courts laid out on the level land at the foot of Seventh Avenue. When that property was built on, the courts were moved to Fifth Avenue, near the apex of the park. When homebuilding there dictated another move, the Association bought the lots directly across the road from the Casino and four courts were built on them. A fifth was added later.

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Originally, these were clay courts that were laboriously rolled, swept, and cared for by dedicated volunteers, members of the Tennis Committee. In the early 1960's, the voters approved a budget item for paving the entire area, over a three-year period. This has greatly reduced maintenance problems, extended the playing season through spring and fall - and even to mild days in winter for some hardy souls. With the addition of basketball backboards and hoops, the surface became a dual-purpose recreation area.

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While Association regulations and Milford ordinances prohibit ball playing on the beach and in the park, the area behind the tennis courts known as Eagle Hill has been used for that purpose for years, first informally and then with a formal diamond and backstop. In 1936, the Association bought the ball field and in 1941 the remaining undeveloped lots on Eagle Hill. So the ball field became officially established. Now plans are under consideration to improve it by leveling and by removing the rock outcrops in the outfield. For the ball field, like the tennis courts, this kind of improvement could broaden its use and make it an even more valuable part of our sports programs.

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Expansion

The idea of the Association buying more property and annexing blocks of land and houses has sometimes raised questions of expansionist policies. But the truth of the matter becomes evident in the perspective of our advance years. Actually, the Association has been very flexible in meeting new situations that have arisen. Property has been acquired, for instance for the tennis courts and ball field, when it was a benefit to the Association that seemed to outweigh the cost - in other words if we needed it and got a bargain. Other properties that seemed to fill a need or give us a protection at one time didn't prove to be necessary at another, so they were sold. Hopefully, to gain some new advantage, as in the current example of a lot sold to the City of Milford for a pumping station site, to hasten the completion and operation of our new sewer system.

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The remarkable thing is that for a community managed by three elected administrators, who usually have no previous civil or governing experience and are accountable only to their neighbors who elected them, the long-range record of the Association in its real estate development, as well as its legal and financial management, has been extremely successful. Especially considering the fact that ever since the by-laws prepared in 1934 went into effect, one new member joins the Board each year and one old member "graduates" thus every three years, there is a totally different group sitting at the head table at the annual meetings. And managing the increasingly complicated Association affairs.

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This is one of the important ways we are able to keep renewing the dream. It must be continually cultivated and renewed, because our community is constantly changing. The original sales brochure put out by the Laurel Beach Land Company was titled, "Laurel Beach.. . Summer Health Resort." In spite of the title's implications, the founders hedged their bet with a paragraph in the text that began, "While most shore cottages are designed for occupation in the summer only, it is apparent that many are now building houses at the sea-side as residences for the entire year. . . no more suitable place can be found for a permanent home."

 

For years, this statement was more wishful thinking than reality. Laurel Beach retained that look and community spirit of, not perhaps a summer health resort, but certainly a vacation colony.

 

Then, in 1922, William Steinkamp, who had owned the shorefront property at the foot of 8th Avenue since 1906, bought the Boughton Farm, which included all of what is now Upper Seventh and Eighth Avenue, Highwood Road, The Grove opposite the Casino and all the properties in that area to the borders of Wildemere Beach. Mr. Steinkamp wanted to have this land made part of the Laurel Beach Association, but since it was included in what was then called the Walnut Beach Improvement Association, it was necessary to get approval from the Legislature for one chartered Association to cede land to another.

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By 1925, all this was accomplished.

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The Highwood section was subdivided and developed. New homes were built, some by members of Mr. Steinkamp's family, who still live there. Many of these new houses were year-round houses, so another facet of the founders' dream began to be realized. Yet even 15 years later, at the start of World War II more than half of the houses on Laurel Beach were strictly cottages. And after Labor Day, for those who stayed on through the winter, the pace of life was distinctly different form the summer season.

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Concerns

With the housing shortages brought on by the war, a number of these cottages were winterized for civilian families. And when veterans returned, looking for homes, more Laurel Beach houses were added to the year-round list. In the ensuing years, summer residents found they could winterize to provide a rental income as a hedge against rapidly rising taxes. Now it is estimated that 80-85% of the houses in the Laurel Beach Association are occupied both summer and winter.

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This has brought new problems in many areas, such as security, maintenance, and enforcement of our vitally important one-family zoning regulations. The Board of Managers has worked closely with the city of Milford in keeping our own standards up, as well as being vigilant about what is happening in adjoining areas that could affect our quality of life or property values. The Board, and individual members, has become more frequent participants in public hearings and departmental meetings at Milford City Hall.

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The added population density throughout the year brought to a head another problem. Seventy- five years ago, the founders could proudly - and truthfully - state that "the soil is such that the sewerage can be easily disposed of." But as time passed, more people and the inevitable aging of septic tanks overburdened the natural leaching possibilities of even our patient, porous Laurel Beach soil. Sewage overflowing into the ground water and seepage into the storm drain outfalls worked its way directly to our swimming beach. And while pollution in the Sound in our area quietly increased, the City built a new sewage treatment plant nearby which, since its opening, has been underutilized. Meanwhile, all the West Shore beaches were operating overburdened individual septic tanks. During the past four years, the Association has expended enormous amounts of time and effort to coordinate our needs and contributions with the city's programs and budgets to bring sewer service to every home in the Association. Construction was started in 1972 and while progress has been sometimes fitful, the whole project seems to be nearing completion this year. So if the diamonds of our jubilee must have the dust of sewer construction brushed off occasionally, the results will justify the inconvenience.

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The Casino

No look at the history and present condition of our community would be complete without some consideration of its most apparent center -the Casino. Certainly no place else in the Beach has seen so much controversy and housed so much fun and entertainment. The facts about the building (or buildings, since the present structure is the "new" Casino) are quickly told. It must have been built in about 1900-1901, since Mr. Gordy, one of the real patriarchs of the Beach and Chairman for many years, notes that when he first came in 1903, "there already was a Casino."

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A 1906 photograph shows us a quaintly appealing building, topped by a widow's walk and graced by ladies in mutton-chop sleeves on the veranda watching a horseless carriage chug down Milford Point Road. Distance lends enchantment. Mr. Gordy writes, "The building was not attractive." It was a two story affair, very much like and old barn. The dance hall was on the second floor. . . It was built by the Laurel Beach Casino Company, a private corporation, on land given by the Laurel Beach Land Company. Later the Corporation was dissolved and the Casino property turned over to the Laurel Beach Association in consideration of the Association assuring the $3,500 mortgage. This was about 1916 to 1918. The new building had done, I think, all that we anticipated. It has largely kept our young people away from road houses. We occupied it in 1929."

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A number of those young people who Mr. Gordy believed were lured away from Gatsby-era road houses by the new Casino are now property owners in their own right. They may possibly have other opinions.

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In any case, much of the activity, social and civic, of the Beach has centered in the Casino. It has seen dramatic confrontations at annual meetings over budgets, utilization of facilities, shore erosion and dog walking. It has witnessed our awakening environmental concerns over the pollution of our own beach, wildlife protection in our neighboring wetlands and noise pollution from our nearby airport which has ambitions to become a jetport.

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It has seen scuffles which nearly became duels-cum-family-feuds, bridge tournaments in the '30s, and high-decibel rock concerts in the '70s. Almost every kind of dance, award ceremony, children's entertainment and committee meeting has taken place in its spacious main ballroom. And in keeping with the continually changing times in which we live, the traditional barriers against liquor were relaxed some 10 years ago to permit guests to bring their own refreshment to the Saturday night dances. But the jacket-and-tie regulation for men remains in force.

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In many ways, the Casino typifies the agelessness and the change, the firmly touted tradition and the constant rejuvenation that characterize Laurel Beach.

Over a century is a long time in the life of a man. It is almost no time in the life of beaches and oceans. If we can learn a little of the lesson of the beach in our front yard, constantly rejuvenated by the tides, perhaps we can continue to be the dream that renews itself for generations to come.

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