The 1864Â Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum on the Sound in Norwalk has enough curiosities and jaw-dropping details to make it a U.S. treasure and a sturdy entry on the National Registry of Historic Places, both of which it is. An 1873 newspaper story called it “the most perfect and most elegant mansion in America.”
It is also a local treasure, saved from the wrecking ball 50 years ago, and an estimable player in the regional economic and business-meeting arenas.
As the mansion”™s board of trustees chairwoman, Patsy Brescia, said, “We are so fortunate to have it. For businesspersons, it offers a unique opportunity to have a function in this type of architectural environment. For those who”™ve used it, it has proven a delightful experience.”
The mansion itself, with details like floor-to-ceiling wood carvings by 19th-century masters Gustave and Christian Herter and a $46,000 library wallpaper job, breaks the ice and drives conversation. “Immediately, people are asking questions about the context of what is here,” Brescia said. The space is available only to business members who support the museum, with membership available beginning at $250 per year.
For now, only the former billiards room is available for meetings. The room has its own entrance, so a meeting can be scheduled, bring its own light fare and slip in and out without crossing into ongoing construction that has, for now, closed the mansion to more-involved meetings (though a summer tour season will go on). The kitchens are presently shut, too.
The construction ”” hidden behind curtains of dust-controlling plastic ”” will make the Second Empire-style mansion accessible and easier to use for all via a modern elevator.
The elevator will stop on all four floors (basement to No. 3) and is being retrofitted into the middle of the structure. Besides its obvious conveniences, the elevator also brings the mansion into Americans With Disabilities Act compliance for accessibility. When the work is done in September, the business-event welcome mat will appear in earnest.
“For businesses, it”™s an opportunity to have an elegant reception or event at this truly beautiful site,” Brescia said. “It would be very hard to find a site that could match it. To be in a home like this for an elegant evening is something that”™s hard to come by.” The mansion will self-host its annual fundraising gala in October.
Lockwood-Mathews also plays a part in Norwalk”™s quality of life.
“Heritage tourism enhances real estate and offers jobs,” mansion Executive Director Susy Gilgore said. “But most importantly, what a site like this does is enhance the quality of life. A lot of businesses are trying to attract top employees and those employees want to know what the area will offer them. We certainly are a big part of that equation.”
Said Brescia, “The businesses want to know what we are doing for the children because they want their employees to have a full and meaningful environment to raise families. The business community is so integral to the success of our mission. And education is a big part of that. They are very into education.”
Gilgore grew up in Europe. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Milan and she has a background in the rough-and-tumble world of New York City politics. She is the mansion”™s lone full-time employee. There are two paid part-timers and about 100 volunteers.
The cost of renting the mansion for an event (after the elevator is completed in September) will be about $2,500. The annual operating budget is $350,000-$400,000, with special projects like the library renovation ”” totaling $250,000 ”” seeking special funds via grants and donations. The elevator project costs $570,000, plus another $200,000 for its required electrical line.
The city of Norwalk gained control of the mansion and its surrounding parkland in 1941, after which it was used for offices and to store voting machines and lawnmowers. Preservation-minded citizens, spearheaded by the Norwalk League of Women Voters, some of whom cleaned mansion details with toothbrushes, sued to save it and won in a case decided by the state”™s Supreme Court in the 1960s. Today, Norwalk leases the home to the nonprofit Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Inc. for a dollar per year.
There is much to ogle, including frescos painted on both sides of the Atlantic, flushing toilets (even in the help”™s quarters), full-time hot and cold running water and a bit of electrical wizardry in the form of a floor-based and rug-hidden burglar alarm that was installed decades before Thomas Edison”™s work made electricity a household staple. Brescia pointed to the wildly colorful marble in an upstairs bathroom and noted, serendipitously, that it was from Brescia, Italy.
The mansion on West Avenue also benefits from proximity to Norwalk”™s major arteries, including Interstate 95, and on-site parking ”” meeting details that can prove huge.
Corporate sponsors include regional home design store Klaff”™s Inc., Spinnaker Real Estate Partners of South Norwalk, Norwalk-based real estate company M.F. DiScala & Co. Inc. and the county-based Xerox Foundation, which recently donated $20,000 to the mansion. “When you have corporate leaders that give so generously, you know you”™re heading in the right direction,” Brescia said.
Brescia, a Realtor with Wilton-based William Pitt Sotheby”™s International Realty, noted Lockwood-Mathews predates many of the storied mansions of Newport, R.I., where the mansion movement crested with the The Breakers in 1895 and Miramar in 1915; few mansions from the Civil War era survive.
“It”™s very unusual to have a mansion from 1864,” she said.
Yet, for all its splendor, the home was a summer cottage, themed on literature, art and music and with symbols of those pursuits carved into walls and furnishings. It was built by LeGrand Lockwood, a shipping magnate, when in his 40s, though little enjoyed; he died of pneumonia in 1872 at age 52.
The Mathews family owned it until 1938, having redeemed it from foreclosure for $90,000 in 1876. It was named to the National Registry in 1971.
