Litchfield is a beautiful town in the Central Hills of Connecticut. It sits on top of one of those hills, a New England town green is the center of town, brick and stone buildings line part of the six roads that cross in its center, white colonials and bright Victorian homes line the others.
The town dates back to 1719 when the land was purchased from the Tunxis Indians. A signer of the Declaration of Independence lived there (his house still stands); George Washington stayed there; one of the first law schools in the United States operated there for over 50 years and had a long list of famous alumni; Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up there, the church where her father, at the time also famous, still stands; viewers of Ken Burns’ Civil War may remember the poignant segment filmed on the town green – the men of the town were virtually wiped out at Cold Harbor, Virginia in 1864.
Litchfield was recently in the news. Its iconic 1890 stone courthouse finally closed. It has been in continuous use since its construction. When it was built, gaslights illuminated it.
There had been a courthouse on the site since 1797, this one is the third, the other two, both made of wood, burned down – hence the stone construction.
It was local lore that the land the courthouse is built on was ‘given’ to the State of Connecticut in 1803 by six prominent locals, veterans all, it is said, of the Revolutionary War. Their only stipulation was that a courthouse must always occupy the site.
One hundred and thirty years after the last granite block was laid for the latest edition of a courthouse, the building - a spectacular example of Romanesque Revival adorned with a Seth Thomas clock tower — was no longer a courthouse. The question was, who owned it?
A few months before the court closed the state conducted a title search and confirmed that those six Revolutionary War veterans did indeed note on the original deed that the land was to revert back to their descendants if a working courthouse was no longer on the property. Their heirs and heirs’ heirs had only to – once a generation – recognize the right in writing.
In other words: a restrictive covenant running with the gift of the property clearly stipulated that the minute the building was no longer a courthouse it was to revert to the descendants of the men who made the original gift.
It was incumbent on each successive generation to do the same but over the years, one by one families failed to do so until only one family did. The last filing was in 1989.
Restrictive covenants ‘run with the land.’ That means they stay in effect as long as – well, a long, long time. The land alone was worth around $2 million, one man, the son of the last descendant to file with the Litchfield probate court, ended up the owner.
Under these circumstances, a lot could have gone wrong but the story has a happy ending – the new owner negotiated a paper ‘sale’ of the property for charitable purposes to the Litchfield Historical Society. The Litchfield Historical Society and the National Park Service worked with a local developer to convert the old courthouse into a restaurant and a B and B that preserves everything that made the place special.