What makes a Connecticut summer weekend? Traffic jams on Interstate 95, tag sale signs tacked to utility poles, and, on many Saturdays, a house and garden tour. And a house tour is coming up on June 20th—albeit one day before the official start of summer. The tour of homes and gardens in Ivoryton and Centerbrook, Through the Garden Gate, benefits the Ivoryton Library. It features seven residences with gardens, and two stops for gardens only.

What makes Through the Garden Gate distinctive is that it also tells the story of the development of Ivoryton, starting with a colonial farmhouse, continuing with the modest 19th century homes for the employees of Comstock, Cheney & Co, once one of the country’s leading manufacturers of ivory products. At one time, up to 90 percent of the ivory imported into the United States was turned into objects from combs to piano keyboards in Ivoryton and Deep River.

The tour also features a Comstock, Cheney executive estate, the home of Archibald Comstock, son of Comstock, Cheney founder Samuel Comstock. Today, however, it is better known as The Copper Beech Inn. Its woodwork and paneling remain notable, but in the early decades of the 20th century when indoor plumbing was not a regular feature of homes, Comstock’s mansion was notable for its five flush toilets.

On the other end of the spectrum, two of the residences on the tour housed workers. At one time one of them, first known as Comstock Cheney Double House #21/22 served as a dormitory for factory workers. Across the street from the former dormitory, Comstock Cheney House #23, is one of six identical workers’ cottages. Today, nonetheless, it is a distinctive home, decorated in what current occupant Cheryl Rayner describes as “shabby chic.” Still there is nothing shabby about the sparkling white walls and carefully color-coordinated accessories that make the house unique. Even the basket of toys for Rayner’s granddaughter matches the white and pink décor—”That’s because she is a girl,” she explained.

The houses on tour show how owners have answered the challenge of blending the old and the new. The Victorian farmhouse house built by Edward Platt in the last decade of the 19th century now has a recently renovated Tuscan-style kitchen and a terrace with a beautiful view of the Falls River. The Charles H. Rose homestead, dating from the 1860s, has kept touches like the old butler’s pantry with original fixtures along with a modern kitchen and an expansive sunroom, made by enclosing an outdoor patio. It also has a television set with a screen so large that will make anyone who remembers watching Milton Berle on a flickering l950s DuMont realize just how far away those days are.

Deana Pinette, co-chair of the organizing committee with Leslie Barlow, noted that houses usually reflect the personality of their owners.

“Mine is exuberant,” she said and those who attend the tour will have a chance to see for themselves.

Her Queen Anne Victorian, the Oswin Redfield home built in the 1870s, has a jungle room with leopard upholstery on several chairs and an original mural by Laura Murphy, with large peacocks, penguins, flowers, and twining vines on the four walls of the entrance hall.

The Daniel Griswold homestead, now owned by Suzy Burke and her husband Edmund, is the oldest home on the tour dating from 1809. The test for the visitor, nonetheless, is to identify where the old house ends and the new addition begins. The addition has beams and woodwork that match the old structure, giving both added space and visual harmony to the rooms. The Burke house has been on previous tours, but this year has the added attraction of newly landscaped gardens.

“Why not do it again?” Suzy Burke said. “It’s for a good cause.”

The two gardens on the tour show a variety of landscape styles from formal borders to kitchen herbs. The Rambeau Garden highlights native species; the Whaples Gardens was designed to have a continuity of colors throughout the seasons.

The house and garden tour is the major fundraiser for the Ivoryton Library, more than 100 years old and one of the few libraries in Connecticut in its original building. Still, as Deana Pinette points out, the tour also has at least one advantage for those who allow their properties to be shown on it.

“Everyone cleans up and does all the things they have always been meaning to do to the house,” she said.

Through the Garden Gate, A Tour of Historic Homes and Gardens in Ivoryton and Centerbrook

Saturday, June 20 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets may be ordered from the Ivoryton Library, 860-767-06442, or at Gather, 104 Main Street Ivoryton. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ivoryton Library the day of the tour. Tickets are $25 in advance; $30 the day of the tour.