Chimblo Brothers Construction Co.

circa 1968

1 Shady Brook Lane, in Old Greenwich, is reported under contract today; currently listed at $2.425, we’ll have to wait until it actually closes to learn the final price.

The Shady Brook Deepwood neighborhood is a good one, so it’s not surprising that this home’s found a buyer. But in looking up its history back to 2007, when these owners paid $2.250 (after it had begun at $2.795 — buyers’ patience can pay off, sometimes, even in over-heated markets) I was struck by this part of the listing agent Betty Moran’s description: EXQUISITE RENOVATION OF CHIMBLO BUILT HOME”.

Newer residents will probably not remember the Chimblo Bros. residential developments in the 50s and 60s (or that they built St. Catharine’s Church during that same period). Indeed, if the name stirs any recognition at all, it’s probably because of the other, related Chimblo clan of cousins, three (4, now?) generations of mental defectives, mouth-breathers from a mutant gene, who slithered out from obscurity in 1975 by burning down the historic Riverside train station, among other buildings, and who have continued over the decades and through succeeding generations to decorate the police blotter with arrests for drug dealing, from both their Cos Cob den and the old Howard Johnsons, where J House now sits; armed robbery of whores and other unfortunates; and just general acts of criminal depravity.

But, while the northern equivalent of an inbred, harelipped Appalachian crime family went its way, the good side of the family was developing big swaths of land in Old Greenwich — Shady Brook; Deepwoods; Manor Road, etc.; Riverside — Dialstone, eg); and Cos Cob, including what’s now Old Stone Bridge, though the homes in the latter were built by a diverse group of local builders on land sold them by the Chimblos.

(That Cos Cob land laid fallow for decades, and served, courtesy of the brothers, as a camping ground for the Boy Scouts in the early-to -mid-60s, before the invention of video games and travel lacrosse teams. We’d load our Trapper John packboards with too much heavy equipment and march out there from St. Paul’s in Riverside. Too late for us tortured 12-year-olds, hip belts, which transferred the weight of the pack from the shoulders, to a hiker’s hips and legs, appeared just a few years later, by which time we’d discovered girls and cars.)

In any event: While the Chimblo firm continues in commercial construction, I don’t believe they’re still in residential development, probably because large tracts of land are long gone. I could be wrong about that, and I’m happy to correct it if someone knows otherwise, but the point here is to assure would-be buyers that, if they’re considering a Chimblo home from that era, they can rely on it having been built to solid specifications, and should have “good bones” beneath any renovations that have been made over the years.

So endeth this morning’s lecture on local lore.