A city once dubbed the “Hardware Capital of the World”, New Britain in Hartford County remains the international headquarters of the tool manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker. The forerunner for this company was founded here as the Stanley Works back in 1843. Another detail I love is that New Britain is the birthplace of the …
This small town west of Hartford has an impossibly beautiful location, embedded in the Farmington River Valley up against the Metacomet Ridge. The ample woodland and majestic overlooks combine to make Simsbury one of my favorite places to experience Connecticut’s foliage in fall. Heublein Tower, constructed for a wealthy businessman more than a century ago, …
Windham in Northeastern Connecticut contains the city of Willimantic, which developed around a textile industry in the late 19th century. There’s a fantastic little museum dedicated to the cotton mill that was once so central to the city’s fortunes. The hundreds of dainty 19th-century properties on Prospect Hill indicate the sort of wealth that the …
Often praised as one of the best small towns in America, West Hartford has a downtown to make most other towns green with envy. The Center and its recent lifestyle extension, Blue Back Square, are made for walking. I could spend hours exploring the one-off shops, while there’s a big roster of hip international restaurants. …
Leafy Greenwich on Connecticut’s rich Gold Coast is a town with serious money. In fact, it’s one of the wealthiest communities in the country, and a bastion of investment firms and hedge funds. I’ll give you an idea of what Greenwich is about: The town has its own polo club, drawing thousands of spectators on …
An affluent town on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, Fairfield is blessed with some alluring beaches on Long Island Sound, as well as old neighborhoods on quaint town greens. In summer, Jennings Beach is a joyous place to while away a sunny day. The shore here is visited by food trucks and there are family film screenings …
More than a century after their silk empire peaked, I still can’t talk about Manchester without mentioning the Cheney family. A big slice of the south of this city, east of Hartford, belongs to the Cheney Brothers Historic District. There you can see the great brick-built mills accompanied by 19th-century worker communities designed according to …
The well-to-do small town of Farmington is 10 miles west of Hartford. This place serves as the international headquarters for a surprising number of big corporations, including Otis Worldwide. What puts Farmington on the map for visitors is the Hill-Stead Museum. This industrialist’s residence has an assemblage of exquisite objets d’art, French Impressionist masterpieces and …
Recently praised by USA Today as one of the most liveable places in America, Danbury is a small city near the southern shore of the upscale Candlewood Lake. Here you’ll be in the very southern foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, with peaks rising to 900+ feet under a mantle of forest. When I think of …
The historic center of this agreeable small town between New Haven and Hartford is on a dignified green. Reaching back centuries, this space is bordered by the First Congregational Church (1827) and a Greek Revival Town Hall. In June the green holds a little strawberry festival, which is appropriate for the many fruit-growing farms in …