The Coley House Room 6 of 6 · The whole house, 2016–2022
Peeling Back the Layers
For thirty years the Coley House was shown as a Victorian home. Between 2016 and 2022 it was taken back to the 1940s, room by room, using evidence found in its own walls.
A house that tells its story in the details
Architectural Preservation Studio surveyed the house in the fall of 2016 and wrote a 267-page report. They found a rare building, “the only example of a Greek Revival, five-bay, gable-front façade in the region,” built in 1841 to impress anyone coming up the hill into Weston.
From the road it looked sound. Underneath, most of the original hand-hewn timbers had been eaten by termites, and the cellar was a patchwork of salvaged beams, “many generations of altering, shoring and patching by creative resident carpenters.” The Coleys were carpenters, and they had been rebuilding their own house for a century.
“The story of the David Dimon Coley House has been built into the fabric of the house and is one which can be told in the details.”
Why the 1940s?
Curator Betsy Fox asked Weston what it wanted. 246 members and neighbors answered a survey, residents and third-grade teachers met in focus groups, and Cleora Coley's nieces shared their memories and photographs of the house.
The answer was the war years, 1941–45, when three generations of Coleys lived here. It was, as the plan put it, a time of transition for the Coleys and for Weston: a farming town becoming a suburb. No other historic house in Connecticut shows that decade. The favorite idea in the survey? Sitting at the dining table to talk about Weston, which is now part of every tour.
Where the $500,000 went
The Daniel E. Offutt III Charitable Trust gave $500,000, with Connecticut Humanities funding the planning and the 1772 Foundation also supporting the work. By the end of 2022, $432,617 had been spent.
- Interior restoration & design $197,758
- Exterior restoration $143,176
- Exhibits $56,710
- Storing the collection $13,188
- Signs $11,594
- Structural report $10,192
Six years, two pandemic stops
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The collection leaves. Movers crated about four tons of furniture and objects, down to the mirrors and marble tabletops, and took them into storage so the work could begin.
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March to summer 2020
“Everything came to a halt.” COVID stopped the work. The wallpaper being printed overseas, the parts for the air-conditioning and the plexiglass for the display cases were all back-ordered, and the planned opening that fall was lost.
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The two stoves. In 2006 the Society had furnished the kitchen around an enormous 1911 Dangler gas range: two ovens, eight burners and three warming ovens. Lovely, but far too big for a farm family of four. The curators chose evidence over spectacle. Out went the Dangler, and in came a 1940s range, refrigerator and wringer washer from the Wethersfield Historical Society. While COVID delayed the pickup, the History Channel filmed them for The Food That Built America. “We will now be installing famous appliances!” wrote the Center's director.
Moving the 1911 Dangler, 3 March 2021. -
Coming home. After 27 months in storage the collection came back, and the lawn filled with boxes.
The collection back on the lawn, June 2021. -
December 2021 to February 2022
Omicron. Work stopped a second time.
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Open again. Supporters cut the ribbon on the front porch, and two days later the house opened to everyone with free tours. That same week the Weston Historical Society became the Weston History & Culture Center.
The ribbon cutting, 30 September 2022. -
18 April 2023
An Award of Merit. The Connecticut League of History Organizations honored the reinterpretation: “a true gem, reflecting excellent research, a wonderful balance of micro- and macro-histories, and a thoughtful and creative combination of exhibition and historic room interpretation.”
The certificate, presented 18 April 2023.
Peel back the wallpaper
Samples scraped from the parlor walls held five layers of paper. Which one did the Coleys live with in the 1940s? Scrape your way down and find out.
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The paper on the parlor walls in 2016, hung by the Historical Society in 1992.
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Cleora's last years in the house.
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The paper in the family's photographs from the 1960s.
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The paper the Coleys lived with during the war. One more, older layer lies beneath it.
Drag across the wall to scrape it, or use the button.
Layer 4: two scraps of the 1940s
In 2019 the restorers searched “behind radiators, and under window moldings, behind light switch plates,” then carefully pulled the layers apart. Two small fragments of the fourth layer survived. Laid over a 1940s paper found in the house, they gave enough of the design to piece the whole pattern back together.
Room by room
Drag the slider, or pick a year, to watch each room change. Photographs the Coley family took in the 1960s and '70s showed the restorers what the rooms had looked like, and the colors they had been.
The deep blue the family chose came back. As the tour script puts it, comparing the family’s photographs with the room, “we were amazed at how little had changed.”
Cleora grew African violets here. A cutting of her mother’s cactus, seen here, still lives in the family today.
Rebuilt in Vermont in 2020: new springs, then new horsehair worked over linen, then velvet.
Harriet Coley made it from her relatives’ hair. A conservator cleaned and remounted it in 2022, and it hangs in the dining room today.
What is this?
The architects found the house's history hiding in plain sight. Turn over all eight cards to earn your Clue Hunter card.
Turned over: 0 of 8
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A silvery doorknob
The front door is believed to be the original of 1841, mercury-glass knob and all.
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A strip above the front door
The roof of the house's first porch, as wide as the doorway, is still there, buried in the ceiling of the porch built before 1872.
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Something in the attic
A fluted wooden column, probably from that first little Greek Revival porch, still lying in the attic.
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A fireplace with no fire
A false mantel. The dining room was the 1841 kitchen, and its great hearth vanished when the center chimney came down about 1910.
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A join in the floor
A splice in the hall floor, probably where the old center chimney and its little winding stair once stood.
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Scars on a door
Two generations of latches. The architects counted at least four generations of door hardware in the house.
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A tiny door
The milk door. Deliveries were left here and taken in from inside, without anyone opening the house.
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A square on the wall
A 1940s paper that could not be taken down, framed where it was found in the upstairs exhibit room.
You're a Clue Hunter.
On your tour, ask your guide to open the door to the steep back stair in the dining room: one more clue you can only see in person.
Finished since opening
In August 2021 the Center listed the jobs still to do once the main work was finished. All of them are now done.
- Done: The upstairs bathroom, with its mid-century bamboo-and-butterfly paper
- Done: The second-floor hall: old paper off, fresh paint on
- Done: Security cameras outside, after windows were broken in July 2021
- Done: Landscaping around the house
- Done: The pathway from the patio
- Done: The gate by the pathway
Waiting for you in the house
- The 1940s wallpaper, back on the parlor walls, and the restored horsehair sofa
- The deep blue kitchen, the 1940s range from Wethersfield and the jars of peas a local artist sculpted from clay
- The steep back stair your guide opens in the dining room
- The square of 1940s paper framed upstairs where it was found
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
Care for the house
Paint, sash, plaster and roof: an 1841 house needs care every year. 2025's repairs to the entry door, a storm window and upstairs plaster came to $3,800.