Can you really see Long Island Sound from Soundview Road?
Soundview Road is a name that surprises some Ridgefielders who do not think of themselves as living near the sea. Although we are almost 15 miles from the shore, the name is accurate.
First called Media Lane at its northern end — presumably because it was halfway between Wilton Roads East and West, Soundview Road first appears as a dirt road with no houses on it on a 1936 map of the town. It may have been an old farm path and it may also have had something to do with the old Fairgrounds where the Ridgefield Fair and Cattle Show took place between 1858 and 1881. The Fairgrounds fronted on Wilton Road West along the top of the ridge, opposite Olmstead Lane, and ran back to include the Soundview neighborhood.
Before that, in 1777 when the area was farmland, this neighborhood served as a campsite for the British troops after their April 27 skirmishes with revolutionaries along North Salem Road and Main Street. Probably the chief reason the British chose this site was that it overlooked Long Island Sound, where British ships awaited the return of the troops. Fires from here signaled the ships that the soldiers would arrive in Norwalk the next day.
From the days before the Revolution well into the 20th Century, Ridgefield was a farming community. Most of the trees in town had been felled to let the sun shine down on the fields. Consequently, there were not nearly as many trees around during the town’s first 250 years as there are today. The view from Soundview Road of Long Island Sound was probably sweeping; indeed, the Sound could be seen from many parts of the village, including High Ridge.
Today, from the southern part of Soundview Road, glimpses of the water — and of Long Island itself on a clear day — can still be seen, especially when the leaves are off the trees.
Dr. Newtown M. Schaffer, a renowned orthopedic surgeon, owned much of the Soundview Road area early in the 20th Century and called his estate “Beacon Hill” to recall the British encampment.
Peter Lorenzini (1916-2004) later owned Beacon Hill and, smaller than it was in its heyday, the house still stands on a lot between Soundview Road and Wilton Road West. (The house once had six chimneys, but today has but one.)
Mr. Lorenzini named and developed the road in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 2004-05, Richard Lorenzini, Peter’s son, built a house at 320 Wilton Road West, on a lot that once housed the pump house for the Beacon Hill estate. The antique steam-operated pump sat in a small, round stone building until early 2004, when the Sloane-Stanley Museum in Kent removed it for its steam engine collection.
Mr. Lorenzini could not bring himself to tear down the beautifully built stone pump house, which was retained and sits in front of the new house to this day.—J.S.
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