One of Connecticut’s more notable historic villages has filed paperwork with the State Historic Preservation Office as a first step toward placing the downtown area on the National Register of Historic Places.
John Guszkowski, consulting planner for Essex, told CT Examiner that when the state of Connecticut doubled funding available for historic preservation projects like this during the COVID pandemic, town officials decided to “strike while the iron was hot.”
Work began on the project in 2021.
The town of Essex, which includes Ivoryton, Centerbrook and Essex villages, has been eyeing a National Register designation since long before that.
In fact, an application was first submitted in 1978 that would have included Main, North Main, South Main, and West Main Streets in Essex Village, but the district was never listed on the National Register.
“[Preservation] had been something we had targeted for many years,” Guszkowski said.
Ivoryton’s historic district received a National Register designation in 2014.
“It had been a goal of the town to get historic recognition for [all three of] its villages,” Guszkowski said. “[Essex Village] is phase two after the nomination and acceptance of the village of Ivoryton into the National Register of Historic Places.”
National Register Historic Districts, Guszkowski said, must be one continuous area that you can “put a rubber band around.” Several disparate clusters of historic buildings would not qualify as a single unit that merits preservation.
“It’s about drawing that map and describing how this contiguous area makes sense as a historic and architectural entity,” he said.
The next step, he said, was to identify which structures within the district “reflect and contribute to that heritage.” Buildings meeting that standard are designated “contributing” structures. The proposed Essex Historic Village encompasses 116 acres, and of the 333 structures and sites within its boundaries. 176 contribute to the district’s historical significance.
“It’s really about storytelling. It’s about describing the history of this area from a relevant and important time in American history,” Guszkowski said.
He said that the application is “principally about documentation.” The town needs to be able to demonstrate the historical significance of structures within the proposed historic district, as well as providing information about when they were built and what they were used for. Architectural details – both historic and present-day – are also key to justifying a building as a contributing structure.
The town hired Kristen Keegan, a preservation consultant with a PhD in Geography, to identify contributing structures, describe their features and historical relevance, and draft a cohesive narrative to bring them together.
Keegan described for CT Examiner the years-long process.
“First I had to decide what area to designate as Essex Village,” Keegan said. “I was hired to do a National Register application for Essex village. But what is Essex village? Where is it? Where does it end? It’s a very common geographic question.”
The boundaries Keegan settled on stretch east to west from Main Street to the Congregational Church, and north to south from the cemetery to South Cove.
The unifying characteristic of the district, she said, was the “Georgian and Greek Revival structures, with a smattering of various other time periods moving into the early 20th century, reflecting the evolution of the community over a couple centuries.”
Keegan explained that the buildings didn’t necessarily have to be in their original form or style.
“If we were to demand that, to be contributing, a building had to be absolutely unchanged from some point in the past, then practically no buildings will qualify,” Keegan said.
But she said the process was much easier in this case, because “there are many, many, really well preserved structures in this district. It’s pretty awesome from a historic architecture point of view.”
A draft nomination must first be submitted to the State Historic Preservation Office for review and commentary. After it is approved, the application is sent on to the Federal Department of the Interior for final review and official designation on the National Register.
Although the designation is for the most part honorary, Keegan said it will provide the downtown with some protection for structures within the National Register Historic District and eligibility for financial incentives.
Property owners can apply for grant money and tax credits through the National Park Service and the State Historic Preservation Office as long as the renovations comply with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitations and maintain the historical architecture of the building to the greatest extent possible.
The designation does not usually limit owners from renovations they pay for themselves.
“If they made major changes then it may result in the structure no longer being a contributing building, but it wouldn’t prevent them from doing work,” said Carey Duques, a land use official for the town.
Buildings are not automatically protected because of a National Register designation, but they do qualify for “additional scrutiny.” So, if a high-profile property is slated for demolition or renovation, local residents can petition the state’s attorney general to intervene.
That does not happen often, but “it’s a tool people can now pick up,” Guszkowski said. “It’s a potential level of protection.”
A National Register designation is just one part of a larger effort at preservation in Essex.
After a property in Essex Village, 3 Pratt Street, was approved in 2024 by the Planning and Zoning Commission for a change of use requiring a total demolition, local residents became more invested in and concerned about the protection of historic buildings.
“This interested group of residents organized themselves, came to the Planning and Zoning Commission, came to the POCD meetings to talk about what are the town’s goals for the next 10 years, specifically around historic preservation and restoration,” Duques said.
As a result, the town of Essex established an ad hoc Historic Preservation Study Committee, with the goal of identifying other tools or methods of protecting the historic heritage of Essex Village.
Since its inception earlier this year, the committee has met four times, welcoming speakers from SHPO, Preservation CT and other organizations.
Brad Shide, from Preservation CT, proposed three potential ways of protecting assets: local historic districts, village districts and preservation ordinances – all with different requirements, enforcement methods and goals.
For now, the committee is “collecting information still at this point to figure out what’s the best fit for the village,” Duques said.
“When you preserve the character of the area, the street view, it’s not too hard – a phrase I like to use is squint a little bit – and you can imagine away all of the modern items and really understand how people were living in the past,” explained Melissa Josefiak, director of the Essex Historical Society. “As a historian that kind of immersive experience is truly what we like to convey through our education program and preservation.”