Our town has many buildings that have withstood the test of time. Many are over two hundred years in age, and many more, while younger in years, are historically significant in terms of provenance alone. From time to time, we’ll showcase some of these structures, showing the difference between Then & Now.
24 Marsh Road
The Harry Escott House
Prior to 1925, virtually all the homes on the top of Sport Hill Road were built and owned by three or four families and their direct descendants. Town zoning laws weren’t created until 1941, so when Ambrose Marsh and his sons decided to sell a small portion of their land on the southern end of their farm, a handful of houses were built on half-acre lots. Built in 1926 by Harry John Escott, a British born contractor who started life in America working as a carpenter for Ambrose’s cousins, Edward and Charles Marsh, the house seen here would have been one of the first “affordable” homes in Easton that was specifically designed to have indoor plumbing, electric power, central heat (likely coal), and a garage to house an automobile. Likely the first true “sub-division” in the town of Easton, Marsh Road (initially labeled Sport Hill Place on a 1931 map) was one of the first farm access lanes to become a residential neighborhood. Improved roads and the automobile meant Easton was then only a twenty-minute commute to the higher paying non-agrarian jobs in Bridgeport, a fact that would change Easton forever. Harry’s wife Dorothy became one of Easton’s most successful realtors after World War II when Easton experienced rapid growth with the addition of many more affordable family homes such as this one.
