Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Connecticut
COLLINSVILLE, CONNECTICUT, RETAINS ALL THE EARMARKS OF ITS 19TH-CENTURY VIGOR—AND MANY DESCENDANTS OF THE PEOPLE WHO FUELED IT
How a highly historic eighteenth- c entury Connecticut house learned to live in harmony with a twentieth-century garden that is the only surviving American design of a great British landscape architect
For 150 years a crenelated Gothic Revival castle in Connecticut has housed an art collection that was astonishing for its time—and ours
We tend to identify the first American public display of art with the post-Civil War surge of wealth called the Gilded Age. Read more >>
To the end of his life America’s most infamous traitor believed he was the hero of the Revolution
Shortly after noon on Thursday, April 20, 1775, a weary postrider swung out of the saddle at Hunt’s Tavern in New Haven, Connecticut, with an urgent message from the Massachusetts Committee of Cor- respondence. Read more >>
The little town of Lebanon, Connecticut, played a larger role in the Revolution than Williamsburg, Virginia, did. And it’s all still there.
Natives of eastern Connecticut like to say that except for Boston and Philadelphia, the village of Lebanon stands first in America in Revolutionary importance. Read more >>
Wherever you travel in this country, you have a good chance of bringing a piece of the past home with you
I drove twenty thousand miles and got just one real bargain. That was up the Hudson River on a boisterous, wind-scrubbed October day fifteen years ago. Read more >>
The years the famous writer spent in their town were magic to a young boy and his sister.
A year after our arrival in Redding, Connecticut, Mark Twain came there to live. Read more >>
A Connecticut photographer’s record of life in a shipbuilding town
In the mid-nineteenth century, Mystic, Connecticut, was at once identical to all the small seafaring communities that stood on the Eastern seaboard and unique in that it turned out a greater tonnage of sturdy ships than any town of its size in America. Read more >>
The place is the fledgling community of Windsor, Connecticut: I the time, an autumn day in the year 1651. A group of local I militiamen has assembled for training exercises. They drill in their usual manner through the morning, then pause for rest and refreshment. Read more >>
In 1639 an Englishman named Lion Gardiner singled out a piece of the New World and removed his family thereto—his very own island off the Connecticut coast. And despite invasions of pirates, treasure hunters, and British soldiers, Gardiners Island has remained in the hands of that family ever since. Because of Lion’s shrewd investment his descendants have indeed been
Robert David Lion Gardiner is a large landowner on Long Island, a successful developer and an impassioned preservationist. What makes Mr. Read more >>
For most Americans who pass that way today, Bridgeport, Connecticut, is a place to get through as soon as possible. Read more >>
Fifth in a series of painting for
AMERICAN HERITAGE
One of the ghastliest incidents of the Revolution took place at Groton, Connecticut, during the last engagement of the war in the north. Read more >>
Life in a small urban community in America in the 1880’s could be exceedingly pleasant, particularly if one was a leading citizen with the means to enjoy it. Read more >>