Flying Ridge is a 33 acre estate in Newtown, Connecticut, located approximately 80 miles outside of New York City by car. However, one of the property’s most salient features is that it has its own airstrip, the only private airstrip in Fairfield County, Connecticut, grandfathered into the property by the fact that it was registered in the 1940s, before permits were prohibited for such a thing. Because of this, as this video demonstrates, it offers its owner a unique way to bridge the gap between a rustic and quiet Connecticut home and the energy and buzz of Manhattan’s Wall Street.
The fact is, Flying Ridge is just 49 nautical miles from the Wall Street Heliport, and the travel time by helicopter can be done in as little as 22 minutes. As demonstrated by the clip, the view, certainly at takeoff, also offers a breathtaking way to start every morning.
The home, on the market with exclusive Affiliate Barbara Cleary’s Realty Guild, offers an ideal country life in bucolic Connecticut. Newtown is an unspoiled, charming community with excellent services and schools. Flying Ridge itself sits atop a ridge, with farmlands to its east and wetlands to its west.
The property’s provenance is also quite unique. It is owned by the family of the late Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., an inventor, adventurer, and pilot who made several aviation-related inventions on the property, among his 70 patents. His aviation-advances included the "Gunairstructor,” the world’s first fixed-aerial gunnery trainer, used to train allied fighter pilots in aerial combat during World War II, an invention credited with improving their scores by over 400%. After the war, he designed and built the “Airphibian,” an airplane that converted into an automobile. While not a commercial success, it was the first flying car ever to receive an air worthiness certification from the FAA, was flown by Charles Lindbergh in 1950, and is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center. He subsequently developed, on the property, during the 1950s and 1960s, the Fulton “Skyhook” Surface-To-Air Rescue (“Star”) System, used by the U.S. military to retrieve downed pilots from remote areas, without landing the pick-up airplane.
Mr. Fulton also is famous for his 18-month solo journey around the world on a motorcycle in the early 1930s—an adventure he chronicled in his 1937 best-selling book, “One Man Caravan.”
For more information on this property, please contact Barbara Cleary’s Realty Guild at +1 203 966 7772.
