Basement Waterproofing, Foundation Repair and Crawl Space Waterproofing Professionals
Budget Dry’s basement waterproofing provides each homeowner with the best solution to their basement waterproofing, crawl space waterproofing, and foundation repair problems. Our project managers will come to your home to review your basement situation, detecting basement leaks and identifying the source of the water. Something that’s not always understood by homeowners is that the air quality of a home built on top of a dirty crawl space can be greatly affected by moisture and harmful gasses that are released from the earth. These include the potentially cancer-causing gas Radon, as well as many other less dangerous yet still unpleasant allergens. We are passionate about providing the absolute best service to each home and homeowner we encounter, because we understand just how important your home is to you. We pride ourselves on our excellent customer service and use of cutting edge industry technology. Budget Dry Basement Waterproofing is a leader in Basement waterproofing and basement restoration. Every Basement flood, leak or crack is evaluated thoroughly to ensure that we provide you with the best solution. So you can be secure and confident in the knowledge that Budget Dry treats the problem, not the symptom!
Facts About Stamford, CT
A long time ago the poet Homer suggested that it was a wise child who knew his own father. Similarly it is a wise citizen who knows his own community. The information that follows attempts to point out critical factors that shaped the community of Stamford from its founding as a town in 1641 to the establishment of the City 252 years later in 1893.
Over the past three-and-a-half centuries, Stamford, CT has evolved from Puritan village to manufacturing town to research center to – at present – home base for major corporations. Through all the shifts, however, it has remained tied to two regional cultures. Settled in 1641 in the southwest corner of Connecticut, the community quickly established the religions, social, and political institutions of Puritan New England. Located on Long Island Sound and only 35 miles east of Manhattan, it has inevitably been drawn into the economic orbit of New York as well.
A bitter quarrel, cause unknown, within the Church of Christ in Wethersfield, precipitated the founding of Stamford. On October 19, 1640 the dissenters organized the Wethersfield Company and resolved to move, as a body, west along the Long Island shore to the banks of the Rippowam River. The land, originally about 128 square miles, had been purchased from local Indian tribes by Nathaniel Turner, an agent of the New Haven Colony, and New Haven was eager to sell it to fellow Puritans.
In the summer of 1641, 28 would-be planters and their wives and families and at least two “Negro servants” began building a meeting-house and their own homes on high ground above the harbor. At first they tried to transfer to the new world the semi-collective open-field system of farming that they had been familiar with in England. But the availability of land and the urge for privatization crippled the effort. By 1700 almost all the acres were in individuals hands. By that date too, Stamford had ceded territory in the north to the towns of Bedford and Pound Ridge in the Province of New York and was reduced to 80 square miles. Ultimately the formation of New Canaan in 1801 and Darien in 1820 reduced Stamford to its present size of almost 40 square miles.
All the settlers had previously participated in the establishment of the basic religious and political institutions that made a Puritan community. The Congregational Church, as The Church of Christ was popularly known, was easily transplanted… (They had brought a minister with them.) Other denominations were barred. Even the Church of England did not secure a foothold until 1742.
Political decisions and setting the mill rate were made at the annual town meeting, a gathering of the adult male planters. Special meetings were called when necessary. Between meetings civic affairs were left in the hands of an elected Board of Selectmen, but, by law and in practice, the First Selectman was clearly “primus inter pares”. A large number of minor offices were also filled at the annual meetings. The system endured for over 300 years.
For the first two centuries the economy was based on agriculture. Farmers grew potatoes, wheat, rye, corn, and oats and engaged in stock-breeding, fishing, and oystering. New York City was the primary market though a few local vessels sailed as far as the West Indies. A variety of skilled artisans and mills supplied community needs. Prior to the Civil War two manufacturing corporations dealt in the national market. They were the Stamford Mfg. Company, which produced dyes and licorice paste, and the Charles H. Phillips Company, eventually best known for its production of Milk of Magnesia.
The impact of the Revolutionary War was doubled-edged. On the one hand there were problems with over 100 Loyalists, mainly Anglicans, and with “skinners” and pirates. The skinners, from Westchester County, stole food, firewood, and whatever was portable for sale to the British. The pirates, secure in their hiding places in the many inlets and coves of the Sound, harassed shipping. On the other hand, Stamford gained a stronger voice in the governing of Connecticut than it had ever known. The voice belonged to Abraham Davenport, the wealthiest and most influential local figure, who sat on the Council of Safety of the State of Connecticut and was part of the inner circle of Governor Jonathan Trumbull.
In the late 1840s two events presaged the entry of Stamford into the emerging industrial economy of the United States. One was the decision in 1848 by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad to schedule Stamford as a regular station stop. The other was the arrival of hundreds of impoverished Irish refugees fleeing the potato famines of 1845-1848. Their presence brought willing hands and increased the town population from 3500 (in round numbers) in 1840 to 7200 in 1860, an increase of 100% in two decades. Stamford was utterly unprepared for this non-Yankee, non-Protestant influx. The newcomers confronted a severe lack of housing, jobs and schools and aroused a violent wave of anti-Catholicism. Branded drunkards and street brawlers, they were blamed for higher crime and delinquency rates and for the spread of dreaded diseases. In the 1850s William T. Minor of Stamford was chosen Governor on the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant “Know Nothing” ticket. The Irish-Americans, though poor, responded by building and supporting their own churches and schools and gained good will by volunteering for the Union cause in record numbers.
The Civil War did absorb community energies. Three years after hostilities ceased, however, Stamford plunged into the industrial economy. In 1868 Linus Yale, Jr., an inventor, and Henry T. Towne, the highly educated son of a wealthy engineer, formed a partnership to produce Yale’s newly-patented pin tumbler lock and slim, flat key. They selected Stamford as their base because of its proximity to New York, its accessibility via land (railroad) or via water (a canal and the Sound) and its large labor pool. Although Yale died suddenly at the end of 1868, Towne went ahead with their plans. The business succeeded quickly and expanded rapidly. Eventually the Yale & Towne building complex spread over 25 acres south of the railroad station. Beginning with 30 workers in 1869, the corporation employed 1,000 men and women by 1892 in a town with a total population of 16,000.
WHERE TO FIND US:
Budget Dry Waterproofing
158 Route 81
Killingworth, CT 06419
800-DRY-2211 (800-379-2211)