The Coley House Room 5 of 6 · Upstairs bedroom
Jimmy's Room
Every other room in the house has reproduction wallpaper. This one is the real thing, chosen for a boy who loved horses.
A boy and his horses
James Burr Coley was born on 17 February 1941, the only child of Jim and Cleora Coley. That spring the family moved into the homestead, and the next July he was baptized at Norfield Congregational Church, with his uncle Arthur Burr as one of his sponsors. Everyone called him Jimmy.
Jimmy, who had Down syndrome, grew up at home at a time when many families were told to send children like him away to an institution. His parents kept him with them. He loved the animals on the farm and had a pony of his own. He mowed the lawn on his father's ride-on mower. He was mad about Hopalong Cassidy, the cowboy hero of radio and television, and later about matchbox cars and wrestling figures. His cousins remember a boy with a sense of mischief: when something went missing, “the dog did it.”
So when it was time to paper his bedroom, Cleora chose horses.
Horses and deer
The paper is a scenic of horses and deer, screen-printed in four colors on thin paper, probably in the late 1940s. Papers of that age still on the wall where they were first hung are unusual. Every other room in the Coley House now has a reproduction; when the restorers found a 1940s dogwood paper under this one, they saved a piece for the archive and left Jimmy's paper on the wall, because it was “significant to the interpretation of the house and the story of the family.”
By 2016 the room had become a storeroom, and the paper was dirty, water-stained and torn. In 2020 paper conservator Jean Baldwin spent months bringing it back:
- Dust from years of building work, soot and old water stains were lifted with soft brushes, a special vacuum, grated erasers and alcohol.
- Panels under the windows, damaged by leaks, were taken down, washed, strengthened with gelatin, backed with Japanese paper and put back.
- Tears were mended with thin Japanese paper toned to match.
- Loose pieces were glued back with a warm tacking iron.
- Where the pattern was lost, the conservator painted it back in by hand.
Afterwards
Jimmy lived in the house with his mother until she died in 1983. Then he moved to a group home in Stamford. He had a job as an assembler, and he traveled with friends to Washington, D.C., and to Florida. Some years later he came back to visit the house he had grown up in. Jimmy died in 1997, at 55.
Today his room holds Let's Play!, the toys Weston children played with, under the horses Cleora chose for him. It is open to every visitor. This page, and that room, are for Jimmy.
Let's Play!
Without video games, television or computers, how did children have fun in Weston? The toys in Jimmy's room come from the Center's collection: toys made by hand in the 1840s, and toys from the factories of the 1940s.
Some were made right here. The Weston Toy Company grew out of Burton P. Merwin's Wood Turning Works at Aspetuck Corners and ran until 1935, making wooden toys that moved by themselves or by a lever: boxers that trade punches, a self-propelled rabbit, a horse and wagon. The factory was torn down in 1988, but its sign survives in the Coley Barn.
Waiting for you in the house
- Jimmy's wallpaper itself: photographs can't show the texture of the printed horses
- His room, with the “Let's Play!” toys under the horse wallpaper
- Toys from the Weston Toy Company, and toys children played with in the 1840s and the 1940s
- The Weston Toy Company's sign in the Coley Barn
Guided tours Thursdays and the first and last Sundays of the month, at 1, 2 and 3 pm, and by appointment. $5 adults, $3 ages 5–17; under 5 and members free.
Plan your visit →Help the house
Adopt an object
Conserving the Coley family's hair wreath cost $3,795. Adopt the next object that needs a conservator's care.