New Canaan's Design October Takes a Colonial Turn This Year

The biggest house tour on New Canaan's October calendar sold out at $165 a ticket. It isn't the modern one. On Saturday, October 17, the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society will take visitors in small vans to Landmark buildings across town, "including private residences, a restored chapel, and a majestic barn." The organizers call it a Historical and Colonial Home Tour, held "in honor of the America's semiquincentennial."

In a town that has spent decades telling its story through glass walls and flat roofs, that's a real change in focus. The reason is a schedule most people never think about. The Historical Society's Modern House Day Tour + Symposium runs every two years, and 2026 is the year it skips.

A tour that runs every other year

The modern tour goes back further than its revival. The first Modern House Day was held on May 14, 1949. Eliot Noyes chaired the organizing committee, and the $2,000 it raised went to the New Canaan Library. The homes on that first tour had all been built between 1947 and 1949, including the Glass House, Breuer House 1, the Gores House, and the Kniffin House, which Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes designed together.

Laura Pla brought the tour back in 2001 to benefit the New Canaan Historical Society. According to the Society's own history, mid-century modern homes were being torn down at the time to make room for larger houses. The tour was meant to show people what was being lost, and in the years that followed, "numerous mid-century moderns slated for demolition were purchased and restored."

These days it runs every other year, which gives New Canaan's October a two-year rhythm:

The off year used to leave a gap. In 2026 it has a theme. With the country marking its 250th year, the Society has filled the open slot with buildings much older than anything the Harvard Five built.

What the off year is looking at

The Society hasn't published which homes are on the October 17 tour, and the ticket page names none of them. It does describe how the day works. Tour buses carry docents, and an architect and a docent meet visitors at each stop to talk about the property's history, design and architectural significance. The afternoon runs from 1 to 5 p.m., leaves from the Society's campus at 13 Oenoke Ridge, and ends with a reception at the Roger Sherman Inn.

Four days earlier, the Society has a smaller event on the same theme that still has room. On Tuesday, October 13, from noon to 1 p.m., Mary Burr and Ryan Salvatore of Burr Salvatore Architects will hold a Lunch & Learn at 13 Oenoke Ridge about preserving older homes in the area. The Society's description says they'll cover keeping a building's "historic foundation and dignity," the advantages of not leaning into trends, and how an old house can still meet the demands of present-day living. Guests bring their own sandwich, soup or salad.

Taken together, the two events turn the questions the 2001 revival asked about modern houses toward New Canaan's Colonial stock: what makes these buildings worth keeping, and how people actually live in them now.

The modern landmarks keep their own schedule

None of this means modernism is missing from New Canaan this month. It's simply carried by institutions, not by private homeowners opening their doors. The 10-day festival the Society leads, OCTOBER4DESIGN, still frames the season as a look at "Modernism, its evolution and impact." The organizers' own pages describe it both as a 10-day event and as a month-long one, and the official calendar hasn't posted a full 2026 lineup. The dates below are the ones individual hosts have confirmed.

1. Sunday, October 4 and Sunday, October 11: The Bard at Bristow – An Immersive Stroll, presented in association with OCTOBER4DESIGN. Groups leave every 15 minutes from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Bristow Bird Sanctuary, starting from Mead Park at 241 Park St.
2. Thursday, October 8 and Thursday, October 22: Golden Hour Tours at the Glass House.
3. Friday, October 9 through Sunday, October 11: The New Canaan Nature Center Fall Fair at 144 Oenoke Ridge, starting Friday evening from 5 to 9 p.m.
4. Sunday, October 11: The 4th Annual Waveny Arts Festival, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 11 Farm Road. This year adds dance performances by New England Academy of Dance and Thomas Ortiz Dance.
5. Through Thursday, October 22: The 76th A•ONE exhibition at Silvermine Arts Center. The Holiday Salon follows from November 7 to December 23.
6. Saturday, October 24: The Art and Architecture Tour at Grace Farms, 365 Lukes Wood Road, which Grace Farms lists as an October4Design event. Chelsea Thatcher leads it through the River building, the Barns, the grounds and selected artworks. Tickets are $35, or $28 for members. At 2 p.m. the same day, the Founders Architecture Talk, "Creative Visions Inspired by the Landscape," brings together Francine Houben, Dorte Mandrup and Sharon Prince, with Julia Gamolina moderating. Tickets are $25 general admission, $20 for members and $12.50 for students.

The Glass House has the longest season on that list. Tours run through December 14, with a Thanksgiving closure from November 26 to 28. The tours include the Brick House, which was restored after water damage and finished in 2024. This year's exhibition, Tomashi Jackson and Robert Rauschenberg: The Catch One, is up through the same December 14 date.

So the 2026 split looks like this. The Glass House and Grace Farms keep the modern side running on their own schedules, while the Historical Society's annual house tour, the one event that opens private doors, has gone back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

A 1960 pavilion waiting on a decision

One piece of New Canaan modernism shows where the two halves of that calendar may eventually meet. In May, the Society's executive director, Nancy Geary, presented an early proposal to the Town Council to move the Gores Pavilion from Irwin Park to the Society's campus at the top of God's Acre. Landis Gores, one of the Harvard Five, designed the pavilion as a winter lodge and summer pool house. It was dedicated in 1960 at a surprise party Philip Johnson threw in Gores's honor.

Geary told the Council the building has maintenance problems. "The doors don't open," she said, and the Society would commit to restoring it to its 1960s condition and running it as a museum. Moving it would also free it from Irwin Park's rule that visitors leave by dusk, so it could be open Tuesday through Saturday whenever the Society is, and possibly in the evenings. The plan is part of a larger redesign of the campus that would take out much of the asphalt parking lot to make room for green space, an outdoor classroom and a picnic area. It follows the Society's purchase of the St. Michael's Lutheran Church property next door.

It's still a proposal. The move would cost about $1 million out of a $2.5 million capital campaign, and Geary said the Society was "a long way" from that goal. It would need approval from the Planning & Zoning Commission, the Historic District Commission, the Board of Selectmen and other bodies. Council member Mike Rodgers raised a concern that the new site could leave the pavilion feeling "closed in and not as important." A July 31 column in the New Canaan Sentinel was still calling the move a proposal.

If it goes ahead, a building that went up during the years the Modern House Day tours were running would end up on the same Oenoke Ridge campus where the Colonial tour starts. For now the pavilion is still in Irwin Park, the Colonial tour leaves 13 Oenoke Ridge at 1 p.m. on October 17, and the next Modern House Day Tour + Symposium is set for October 16, 2027.

If the Burr Salvatore talk gets you thinking about your own older house, whether that's original millwork, a renovation that should respect the structure, or what to keep when it's time to sell, I'd be glad to talk it through. Maura Gilson-O'Donnell brings interior design experience with antique homes to every conversation about presentation and long-term value. Let's Start a Conversation.