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eautification
efforts continued after the Civil War under the auspices of the
Litchfield Village Improvement Society, formed in 1875. The
Society's doings around town focused attention on the importance of
the Litchfield's appearance and were the first in a long series of
efforts to recast the increasingly Victorian village in a "more
historic" Colonial image. That desire may have been bolstered by
the devastation wrought by two fires, in the summers of 1886 and
1888, which twice destroyed the wooden buildings lining West Street
on the south side of the green.
Whatever could be salvaged after the fire was
temporarily placed on the green.
A
plan to remodel the brick replacement structures with Colonial
storefronts was put forth in 1902 as part of a scheme to create a
homogenous architecture and raise real estate values. In 1913
Olmsted Brothers, the noted landscape architecture partnership of
brothers John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.,
drafted a report for the park's redesign along more simple and
natural lines.
By the 1930s the village looked more
"Colonial" than it did in the Colonial era. Images of the
Litchfield Green and the surrounding architecture were used to sell
everything from white paint to high-quality building
lumber.
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