Falls Village Home on December 7 House Tour

[Editors note: This story appears in the My Favorite Room section of the December 2013 issue of LCT magazine.]

Canaanwhich for this purpose refers to the historical town now divided into North Canaan and Falls Villageis a community with two dominant cultural traditions: WASP and Italian-American. The warm and inviting home of John Pozzi of Falls Village perfectly encapsulates both qualities, recalling the stalwart first families who settled the wilderness town in the 1730s and the equally intrepid Italian immigrants who left their homes and beloved families to find a new life in the United States a century later.

Mr. Pozzi, an educator who during his first retirement took a 90-day position as interim principal at Lee H. Kellogg School in Falls Village and stayed for 10 years, has now lived in the town for a quarter century, all of them in a cozy little cottage on Belden Street that once belonged to the prolific, pioneering Beldens. While the house has evolvedas all doover the nearly 250 years of its history, Mr. Pozzi has carefully maintained the historic quality of his home.

Here one finds the heavy wooden beams, now exposed, that form the strong bones of the house, still tight and square despite the centuries. Here, too, is the massive central chimney whose stones, once heated by fires that never went out, radiated warmth throughout its rooms. And here, is a modern additionthe compact but efficient kitchen that is the social center for this warm-hearted Italian family.

Mr. Pozzis love of cooking and entertaining explains his designation of his favorite room: the large communal room that was once central to the Colonial life of the Belden family and that today is the focus of family gatherings for the extended Pozzi clan.

My wife and I had six children, he said, and now I have 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. We have always been a close family and often have as many as 20 people here for holidays.

Mr. Pozzi is expecting his family to gather once again for Thanksgiving. He was seated recently at the head of the modest size dining room table, which was surrounded by six authentic-looking Windsor chair reproductions. Asked where he would put such a large gathering, he said a table in the living room folds neatly out of the way most of the time but extends amply when the holidays roll around. More family members eat at the table in the dining room on other side of the kitchen and, if there is overflow, They can sit in the chairs in the den, he said.

Italians are very food-oriented, he said, and social gatherings center around wonderful meals and sharing that. My grandparents had six kids and there were a lot of us. It was the preparing and sharing of good food that was most important.

Mr. Pozzis classic little saltbox home is one of five houses that will be included in the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Societys third annual Holiday Historic House Tour slated for Dec. 7 from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a snow date of Dec. 8.

While the exact date of the houses construction is not certain, it was probably built by Charles Belden Jr. in 1778 or slightly later, when he married Lois Bosworth in 1784. Despite this relatively early date, Charles was already the third-generation of his family in the community. His grandfather, Silas Belding, bought land when the town was sold at auction in New London in 1737, and received the first share of land allotted by the proprietorsa parcel located near the Point of Rocks at the end of what is now known as Belden Street. Continued...

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Falls Village Home on December 7 House Tour