QUINTARD AVENUE in Old Greenwich: named for Henry F. Quintard of Sound Beach who once owned a large tract of farmland bought from the Indians. The north entrance to Greenwich Cove Park was created in 1905. The old Quintard Homestead was built around 1725.
Rambleside
off Lake Avenue — Named after Zalmon Gilbert Simmons (1871–1934) who, upon the death of his father in 1910, took over the family company in Wisconsin, headquartered it in New York, bought textile mills in North Carolina and turned it into one of the largest manufacturers of beds, springs and mattresses in the country, eventually moving into Canada and Europe. In 1923 he started buying up land in mid-Greenwich, a large portion from Alice C. Schwab, and expanded the Schwab farmhouse into a mansion called Rambleside. His wife Frances asked her friend Elsie de Wolfe to decorate the interior. Outside, the landscape was superior. Simmons trucked in and replanted fullgrown elms, making sure that bridges en route could carry the load. There were greenhouses, rose gardens, fishponds and the “River of Iris,” Frances’s rare collection of hundreds of irises that attracted visitors from all over the world. Before the Depression, eightythree gardeners took care of the prop Zalmon Simmons erty, supervised by
SIMMONS LANE
SIMMONS: COURTESY LESLIE SIMMONS LEE ; COURTESY HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF GREENWICH
SIMMONS LANE
the head of the botanical department at Columbia University. Among the outbuildings was a guesthouse, stable, aviary and even a duck house to shelter the ducks that came to feed by the lake. Simmons gave land to his sons Zalmon Jr. and Grant to build houses on either side of Rambleside but retained 100 acres. After his death in 1934, the main house was sold and in 1951 the family donated seventy-five acres between Clapboard Ridge and Lake Avenue to the Boys Club for a summer camp, which is still going strong today. The organ that Zalmon and Frances donated to what is now called First Church of Round Hill is still being played, and there’s still a Simmons on Simmons Lane. His greatgranddaughter Leslie Simmons Lee, daughter of Grant Jr., and her husband, Charles, live in a house on the estate. They had to fight against a 27,000-squarefoot house (with twenty-six bathrooms) being built on the site of the original home. Says Charlie: “They were trying to put a palace on a postage stamp.”
John Dayton
DAYTON AVENUE,
downtown: named for John Dayton, who built the first commercial building on Greenwich Avenue, near the top, around 1860. He owned the shoe store on the first floor. Also a sheriff, he sometimes kept prisoners at his house due to the lack of jail cells in town, and his wife, a good cook, fed them well. HETTIEFRED ROAD,
northeast near New York border: named for Hettie and Fred Schmaling, who had a farm and a farm stand on King Street.
BINNEY LANE, Old Greenwich: named for Edwin Binney (1866– 1934), who co-invented Crayola Crayons. He and his wife, Alice, first president of the Historical Society of Greenwich and an early proponent of conservation, lived in their waterfront home Rocklyn and in 1940 gave thirty-two acres of land for what would eventually become Binney Park. » Edwin Binney
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