Grating the Nutmeg 103: Cannonballs & Skyscrapers — Keeler Tavern

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Listen to Grating the Nutmeg Episode 103 as CT Explored’s Mary Donohue talks with the Keeler Tavern Museum about cannonballs, skyscrapers, gardens, and how the staff has pivoted to providing education programs to school kids during a pandemic.

Keeler Tavern educator Melissa Houston. Keeler Tavern Museum

Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

The gardens at Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

The gardens at Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

The gardens at Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

The gardens at Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

Julia Finch Gilbert in court ensemble. Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

Julia Finch Gilbert’s court dress. Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

“Sisters,” live streamed from the Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center

Episode 103: Cannonballs and Skycrapers: Keeler Tavern Museum
39 Minutes. Release date: October 1, 2020

Owned by the same family for its first 200 years and then purchased by star architect Cass Gilbert in 1907 for his summer home, the Keeler Tavern was smack in the middle of the American Revolution’s Battle of Ridgefield and has a cannonball embedded in the façade to prove it. New York City architect Cass Gilbert, designer of early skyscrapers like the Woolworth Building in New York City, kept all of the home’s colonial charm and added to it! Cass Gilbert had  a big impact on Connecticut’s architecture in Hartford, Waterbury, Waterford, and New Haven. But there’s more to the Keeler Tavern than a pretty place! New research is enhancing the museum’s ability to tell women’s  and African American history in programming for adults and children. The pandemic pushed many museums to reach out to their audience using new technologies. Hear more about how the Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center’s dynamic staff is telling their story and finding new audiences in 2020 with architectural historian Mary Donohue.

Thank our guests Hildi Grob, Executive Director, Catherine Prescott, Chief Curator, and Melissa Houston, Educational Director from the Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center. See more at https://keelertavernmuseum.org/

Our mid-reel sponsor is the Wilton Historical Society at http://wiltonhistorical.org/.
Mentioned in the episode: Historical Interpreter-Cheyney McKnight at NotYourMommasHistory
Playwrights: Joanne Hudson, Redding, CT and Royal Shiree, Lynchburg, VA
This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan. Music by Hyde.

Read more
“Benedict Arnold and the Battle of Ridgefield,” Winter 2017-2018
Cass Gilbert-designer buildings:
Glamour and Purpose in New Haven’s Union Station,Spring 2013
“Longer Lasting Than Brass: Waterbury’s City Hall Restored,” Fall 2011
“Seaside”

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