Walter Bansley proposed to his wife Sherri on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Four years later the young family, now filled out with Baby Walter and Buddy the Dog, want to return and to live in Firenze.
First they must sell another place they love: their home at 20 Academy St., Wooster Square’s landmark former Italian consulate building, through whose lobby tens of thousands of Marchegiani and Amalfitani had trudged since 1910.
Besides history, new owners would inherit expectations, two informal traditions associated with the building: flying the flag of Italy and America on the pole in front and, of course, hosting the neighborhood Christmas party.
A month ago, a For Sale sign appeared beside the flags.
Allan Appel Photo
After four happy years in the house, and with a portable 8‑month-old, the Bansleys decided it was time for an international living experience.
Sherri Bansley’s (nee Dente) parents are both of Italian heritage. Walter’s mom is, too. So Italy was in their lives, but as a background. When they met as students at Quinnipiac University Law School, they had both studied in and been to Italy and particularly Florence several times.
On one of their trips to Florence, they took an evening on a walk across the Arno.
“Walt pulled out a lock,” Sherri recalled. He fastened it onto a gate in front of a statue on the bridge. Then he ceremonially threw away the keys into the river, declaring thereby his love forever for Sherri.
He was acting out a Florentine tradition, Sherri said, but she didn’t know it at the time. “I was so confused.”
It became clearer when, moments later, he got down on his knees and proposed marriage to her.
Back in New Haven, they looked for a house near Bansley’s law practice on Orange Street. Buddy the Dog, out on one of his walks, led them first to Court, then Academy Street.
Although the lawyerly Bansley insisted they were not looking specifically in the old Italian Wooster Square neighborhood, only the unromantic and non-spiritual could deny that there was some Italian karma at work.
They purchased the house in 2006. The insides, including mantles, floors, crown moldings, and an elegant stairway, had all been restored by Betty Carbonella. Carbonella, who’s now 83, had bought the house in 1970, just after the area, spared the Model Cities bulldozer, was returning to its current quiet elegance, buoyed by the restoration of homes along Court Street.
Walter’s favorite features of the house are the parquet floors; the different designs of inlaid wooden elements never bore him. Sherri likes the stained glass windows, although she hasn’t studied them sufficiently to figure out the specific plants and birds portrayed.
Whatever the inside changes a future owner might make, the exterior is protected because the house of course resides in an historic district.
During a tour Friday the couple showed off the office area of the former consulate, immediately to the left of the small entry porch. It is here that immigrants would gather in search of help with documents, a letter home, translation services. Pocket and French doors separated the single small office area from the rest of the house, which was the counsel’s residence. Walter keeps the original French doors in the basement.
Walter said they’ve never had a knock on the door from a former immigrant or immigrant’s descendant come back for a trip down nostalgia lane. “People do still ask for Betty,” he said.
Sherri has established her own tradition, affixing the Italian word for kitchen above the entry to hers. The scene of a periodic rotating-cook gathering of her women relatives and friends, it is called the Cucina Club.
The Bansleys love the close-knit neighborhood; they admit they’re torn about leaving. “It’s flattering when people say, ‘Don’t go.’ They told me they were going to take down the sign so nobody would see it,” Walter said.
Walter said he’s confident a new buyer will maintain the house’s traditions.
Prospective buyers “look at this house for the same reasons we did: the history, the crown molding, the stained glass,” he said.
The house is on the market for $925,000. Sherri said that to her knowledge 20 Academy is the only single-family house left around the square. If they sell it, they go to live in Florence. If they don’t sell it, well, they’re still in a kind of Italy right where they are.