When Amanda DiGiacomo and Jason Pastuzyn first saw the Book Barn, sunlight streamed through holes in the siding, and lead paint coated the walls and windows. But the space felt like kismet—as if it had been lying in wait for its next tenants to steward it through another chapter.
Amanda, who grew up in North Salem, met Jason while the two were attending Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.
“All of the houses on Fraternity Row at Stevens are Victorian and they have so much architectural beauty,” Amanda tells us. “The rooms have wood paneling and beautiful murals. I’ve always had an affinity for antique homes, and the longer Jason has been with me, the more he’s said that he wouldn’t want to live in a new build.”
The couple graduated in 2018 and moved to Jersey City. But after years of city living, the pull for fresh air and wide-open spaces became relentless. On weekends, Amanda and Jason traveled north to visit her parents, exploring Ridgefield and the surrounding towns. They would also peruse local real estate listings, just for fun.
In early 2020, Amanda came across a listing for a home referred to as the “Book Barn” on Zillow. The real estate agent tried to dissuade her from seeing it in person.
“They said, ‘Are you sure? It’s kind of… a dump.’ And it was!” Amanda recalls. “But as soon as I walked in I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to have it.”
She recalls driving out of the driveway, tears in her eyes, saying to Jason, “We have to buy this house!” To which he responded, “What do you mean, we weren’t going to buy anything! We were just looking!”
“Amanda usually gets what she wants,” Jason says, laughing. “But in this case, it didn’t take much convincing—it was a no-brainer for both of us.”
Standing in the great room—the original barn structure—it’s impossible not to feel the pull of history. Amanda felt it, too, and has spent the last several years researching the home’s most famous tenant: Emma “Emmy” Sloan Gregor, founder of the Book Barn.
Emmy was born in Pennsylvania in 1887. During World War I, she traveled to Bordeaux, France where she volunteered at YMCA Hut 7 as a “Canteen Girl.” These volunteers were charged with providing morale boosts to soldiers fighting on the front lines—sometimes making a cup of hot chocolate, other times writing letters for servicemen who needed help.
When she returned stateside, Emmy moved to Hartford and worked at the Red Cross Hospital. But her dream was to buy a barn.
“For some time I had been obsessed with a desire to rescue old barns,” Emmy told a Hartford Courant reporter for their “Interesting Stories About Interesting People” column in December 1927. “Besides I wanted a week-end haunt as I was doing Red Cross work in Washington.”
Emmy was staying with friends in Wilton who owned a hardware store and, as luck would have it, the first customer one morning was Thomas Winfield Scott. He needed his broken whiffletree repaired. He also happened to have a barn for sale.
“The Scott Barn,” as it was known colloquially, was situated on the line between Wilton and Ridgefield at what is currently Wilton Road West. The building is believed to have been constructed in the 1700s.
April Pereyra, a professional home historian who runs her own business, Stoop Sleuths (stoopsleuths.com), also does pro bono research for the Ridgefield Historical Society. When Amanda and Jason contacted the Society in late 2024 about adding a historical plaque to their home, April was assigned to research the property—building on the substantial groundwork Amanda had already compiled.
“Physical characteristics point to the barn being built sometime in the late 18th century,” April says. “Though a remaining step would be to trace the property back into the Scott Family farm and beyond to see if there’s anything that might indicate when the barn was actually constructed.”
April discovered Ridgefield and Wilton land records confirming Emmy closed the deal with Mr. Scott on November 7, 1925 in Ridgefield and was using “The Book Barn” as a trade name for her mail-order book business by the end of 1926.
With her signature grit and determination, Emmy set about reviving her barn. She purchased another dilapidated barn down the road for $8 and wielded a hammer to demolish the structure and salvage its timber. Using this, she constructed shutters, furniture, and shelves for the Book Barn. She then directed stonemasons to create a pièce de résistance: a massive stone fireplace.
Each day, a little more progress was made, and eventually Emmy succeeded in transforming the once cold and desolate barn into a thriving business and cozy home.
The November 28, 1931 issue of Publisher’s Weekly, explains it perfectly, noting that when Emmy took it over, “it was just a dilapidated weather-beaten building with none of the charm which today makes it one of the most romantic of country bookshops.”
In all of the contemporary articles that Amanda and April have sourced about Emmy and the Book Barn, it’s clear she was a woman before her time. Endowed with a certain je ne sais quoi, Emmy had a clear vision of what she wanted—and she made it happen.
“Emmy was full of pluck and charm, fearless, and seemingly unconcerned about any social expectations society had for women of her time,” April says. “She created a woman-owned business decades before that was an official term. Amanda and I have often chatted about whether Emmy was ahead of her time or simply emblematic of her generation of women as a whole. It’s a delicious conversation, with no definitive conclusion.”
Emmy filled her shop: with her family’s antiques, with furniture she crafted, with books she sourced, and with cakes she baked from scratch daily.
She married Fred Gregor in 1929 and the couple had a daughter, Ruth. The Book Barn thrived until a decline in the mid-1940s, likely brought about by World War II. After closing the Book Barn in 1945, the Gregors moved to Ohio.
For the better part of 75 years, the Book Barn—though well-loved—was not well-kept.
When Amanda and Jason purchased the property in 2020, they mirrored Emmy’s affection for the space—and her hands-on approach. Much of that summer was spent demoing the home themselves, saving on renovation costs while preserving as much of the original structure as possible, especially the historic beams.
Jim Blansfield of Blansfield Builders and Connor Rowe handled much of the day-to-day contract work, helping bring the barn back to life (and up to code). Working with Wilton architect Rob Sanders and Jodi Hook of JC Ellis, LLC, the couple relocated the kitchen, which had been small and tucked off the great room. By leveling the floors between the original barn and the later additions, they transformed it into a true heart of the home.
Then, Amanda and Jason filled their home: with furniture (including dining tables sourced and restored by Amanda’s sister), with antique decor, with Book Barn memorabilia, and with new memories. They became engaged in 2022, married in 2023, and welcomed daughter Hallie in 2024.
“We’ve slowly added different furniture pieces that we’ve found at estate sales,” Amanda tells us. “We want to honor the house in that way too.”
Photos from the Book Barn era reveal Emmy’s distinctly eclectic style: handmade modern tables perched atop oriental rugs, and antiques—which the Hartford Courant confirms were family heirlooms—displayed alongside Americana decor.
“Everything was mismatched, which made it look so timeless,” Amanda says. “And that’s how I feel about design today. When everything’s a little bit eclectic and you have pieces from different time periods, your house feels timeless.”
Amanda and Jason approached Hallie’s nursery with the same mindset, filling it with antique treasures alongside more modern, functional pieces—and, of course, books. Classics like Make Way for Ducklings and The Secret Garden are prominently displayed, while more toddler-friendly board books sit on a bookshelf. A sweet, mauve-colored wardrobe complements the timeless, muted wallpaper.
As magazines and newspapers continue digitizing their archives, new articles about Emmy crop up every so often. Amanda tells us that’s how she has been able to source and purchase hundred-year-old copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar that are works of art in themselves.
But one treasure Amanda would prize above all else remains elusive: a book stamped with the Book Barn insignia.
“Emmy had a Book Barn stamp she used in her books, and I’ve been looking for one ever since we bought the house,” Amanda says. “Every estate sale I go to in Ridgefield, I flip through old books just to check. April does the same now. We’re both hoping that one day, we’ll find a book that carries her mark.”
Though separated by a century, parallels between Emmy and Fred and Amanda and Jason are striking. Not only did each couple work to give their beloved home a new chance at life, but like Emmy and Fred, Amanda and Jason also have a daughter. And like Emmy, Amanda is good friends with the owners of a house next door that used to be an antiques shop in the Book Barn era.
“They would constantly send business back and forth to each other,” Amanda says. "So we talk about that a lot, how Emmy was probably walking with her lantern over there for a chat. I’m walking over for a chat, too, just with my iPhone flashlight instead!”
Standing in the great room, Amanda touches a miniature copy of Wuthering Heights that she’s placed into a niche carved out exactly for that purpose by Emmy herself.
“I think about Emmy a lot, how she saw potential in this falling-apart barn and refused to let it disappear,” Amanda says. “We feel the same responsibility. This house has survived wars, decades of neglect, multiple owners. Our job is to make sure it survives us too, and that whoever comes next falls in love with it the way we did—the way Emmy did.”