In latest mystery, widow buys up islands off Connecticut coast

BRANFORD, Conn. --Some people collect stamps. Christine Svenningsen collects small islands.

The widow, whose private ways and extravagant tastes in real estate have tongues wagging along Connecticut's coastline, has spent about $33 million in recent years to buy 10 of the Thimble Islands in Long Island Sound.
The secluded islands, known by the Mattabesec Indians as "the beautiful sea rocks," have attracted legends and luminaries for generations. Circus star Tom Thumb found love on the islands, and treasure hunters have combed them for Captain Kidd's buried riches.

Svenningsen's buying spree -- especially the prices she has paid -- has sparked the latest mystery on the islands.
"It's like a movie," said Valerie Wiel, who owns a market on the nearby mainland in the Stony Creek section of Branford. "Is she going to buy the whole town?

The town has been pretty much the same for a long time. To me, this points to more change than people would be comfortable with."
Svenningsen, a widow of a party-goods magnate, bought her latest island this week for $2.

7 million and has her eye on another one.
"There's no master plan," Svenningsen said in what she called her first and only interview. "They're like little pieces of art.

I get to put my brush to them."
An artist, she is renovating many of the historic homes and paints the furniture with bright fish and other nautical themes. She fills her islands with colorful gardens, including one with lilies.

"You can smell it before you get to the dock with your boat," she said.
Of the hundreds of Thimble Islands, about 25 are considered habitable. Tour boats have taken sightseers among the islands for generations.

Houses on the islands have long served as social gathering spots for the wealthy and famous, as well as summer vacation sites for families of modest means. President William H. Taft and actor James Earl Jones were among the visitors, while "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau and his wife, newscaster Jane Pauley, own an island home.

Svenningsen's late husband, John, bought a home on the islands in the late 1970s. After he died in 1997, she began to buy more islands.
She bought the house where Tom Thumb courted "Miss Emily.

" Local legend has it that his boss, P.T. Barnum, ordered Thumb instead to marry "Miss Livinia," another of his performers.

Tom and Emily's names remain etched in a rock near the house. Svenningsen said she plans to rebuild a bridge that connected the house to another island before it was washed away by the 1938 hurricane.
"She tends to take very good care of the islands," said John Herzan of the New Haven Preservation Trust.

"It's not pure preservation, but it's high-quality renovation."
Svenningsen shocked the town in 2003 when she paid $23.5 million for the 7.

75-acre Rogers Island with a Tudor-style mansion, tennis court, docks, swimming pool and bath house. It remains the highest price that one of the Thimbles has fetched.
"I think she's creating her own market," said Bill Donaruma, a town appraiser.

Svenningsen said she agonized over each purchase and had to be mindful of the competition. Other buyers may have developed condominiums, she said.
"It's not the Hamptons, and I don't think anyone wants it to become the Hamptons," Svenningsen said.

"I think we all like it the way it is, a little slower pace of life."
Her purchases have come as soaring real estate prices, especially along the waterfront, have caused a dramatic jump in property taxes. That has forced some property owners to sell after living on the islands and the mainland for generations.

Some worry that the islands are increasingly becoming a playground for the rich.
They are concerned that the days when families stayed in small homes with kerosene lamps, no televisions and only rain water for showers are giving way to trophy homes with manicured lawns.
"The Thimble Islands were quaint.

I don't think they're quaint any more," said Anthony DaRos, Branford's former first selectman, who has worked on the homes as a contractor for decades. "They were such a great playground for everybody." Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

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