The Norton
Thomas Eddy Tallmadge designed and built the Norton cabin for John Norton. It is located adjacent to the Tallmadge cabin. Norton and Tallmadge were good friends, and both greatly contributed to the early development of Ox-Bow.
Over the years, the walls of the Norton have been covered in playful murals. The southwest bedroom has the most expansive set of paintings; in the kitchen, an immense hand-carved cupboard depicts life at Ox-Bow.
Tallmadge describes the atmosphere of Norton’s cottage in John W. Norton: A Brief Biography of His Life, privately published in 1935:
In 1924 on a bleak day in April, John and I picked out a site for his cottage in the “Ox-Bow” near the village of Saugatuck. High on a hill on the edge of a heavy forest, looking out over a vista of water, moor, and dune, the cottage stands. Silent, stark, and frigid it lay through the long winter months, but how it used to warm into life with the coming of spring. For nine summers and well into the falls the painter and his family occupied this cottage. Gradually, whenever there was a flat wall there clung a mural and projecting surfaces were carved in curious shapes. There the children, and later the grandchildren spent happy, healthful summers, and here in weekend profusion fathered friends, pupils and patrons. There is a big fireplace, built in the local manner, in the main room, which shared with the black oil-clothe covered table its popularity as a point d’aller for conversational excursions. For two years a flying squirrel every evening would join the chatter, darting down the chimney regardless of the blazing logs, and, perched on shoulder or knee, would demand his ration of peanut butter. His successors were two baby rabbits that the Persian cat dragged in and suckled through a hectic infancy, Happy Days!
