Russian Village

This is the St. Sergius Chapel in Russian Village in Southbury.

There's a place called Russian Village in Southbury because in 1925, a small group of Russian immigrants bought some land deep in the woods here, where the birch trees reminded them of their homeland.

They planned a colony, named Churaevka after a fictitious Siberian village in a novel by author and professor George Grebentschikoff. Led by Grebentschikoff and Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of Leo Tolstoy, the group of artists and writers who had fled the aftermath of the Russian revolution turned this place into a summer retreat and center of Russian culture.

They constructed this tiny Russian Orthodox chapel and a cluster of cottages. They ran a Russian-language print shop. Residents were artists, writers, and dancers; visitors included composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and actor Michael Chekov.

Churaevka is no longer a primarily Russian enclave, but it still exists as a small community off I-84. I mean right next to I-84, yet practically impossible (unlike most of Connecticut's cool little spots) to stumble upon when lost.

Its streets are named Russian Village Road, Kiev Drive, and Tolstoy Lane. The cottages have been modified for year-round habitation, but the layout has changed little since Grebentschikoff first surveyed the land in the 1920s.

It was strictly a summer place, back then, but there's something curiously magnetic about it in the winter. As in, when I took these pictures it was 14 degrees out and I forgot my gloves in the car and I didn't even mind.

Southbury 2 for 1

The two schoolhouses in the post are a little beyond the usual pocket-sized, one-room deals. They are also located on the same street in Southbury. This one, the White Oak School, was built around 1840. The area is called White Oak because when the town's first settlers - 15 families from Stratford who the Southbury town website calls "insurgents" -  traveled up the Housatonic on rafts, they spent their first night here under a white oak tree.

And this one, the Bullet Hill School, dates from the late 18th century. I'm not giving an exact date, because I've seen several. But it's pretty old. The name derives from the fact that the clay for the school's bricks came from nearby Bullet Hill. How the hill got that name is a little unclear - either bullets were made there during the Revolutionary War, or the Southbury Militia shot into the hill while drilling. In any case, there was a hill, and there were bullets. And there was this school, which was first called the Brick School, just to make it a bit more confusing.

This was a functioning school building until either 1941 or 1942 (who knew Southbury was so full of controversy?) and was restored in the 1960s-70s.