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Compiled by Diane Carpenter
Think of Connecticut and one of the pictures that
immediately comes to mind is a classic New England town with a
central green bordered by Colonial houses and a white steepled
church. Many Connecticut town and cities originally looked like
this, especially those that originated as farming communities
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early nineteenth
century, however, industrialization began to transform the appearance
of existing towns and new towns, centered around factories, rather
than churches, sprang into existence. While typical farming communities
were located on hilltops, typical mill towns were located in river
valleys beside the streams that provided them with waterpower.
The building of canals and railroads also influenced the growth
of towns and cities. Towns grew and flourished or failed to grow
– and even lost population –depending on their access
to transportation networks. By the early twentieth century, the
advent of local trolley systems and later the automobile encouraged
people to move from city centers to suburban “bedroom towns,”
some of which were originally nineteenth-century factory villages
or Colonial farming communities. Even when a town has been totally
transformed over time, its surviving buildings—its churches,
factories, houses and railroad stations—and its street plan
often provide clues to its origin. Every town in Connecticut has
its own story to tell; together, they tell the story of the state.
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