Historic Districts

The Strickland Road Historic District encompasses the area known historically as the Lower Landing, a former maritime center and later home to the Cos Cob art colony. The historic road follows Strickland Brook from the Post Road to Cos Cob Harbor where a tidal dam, built by David Bush in 1763 at the mouth of the brook, created Mill Pond.

The Putnam Hill Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Once the center of the town of Greenwich, the district is named for General Israel Putnam, a Revolutionary War hero who in 1779 evaded pursuing British soldiers by riding from Knapp’s Tavern down the steep hill to Stamford where he alerted the militia.

The Glenville Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. The name “Glenville” (for the area’s valley or glen) first appeared in print, in the name of the Glenville Manufacturing Company, in 1848.

The land between two centers of maritime commerce at the lower and upper landings on the Mianus River was once part of William H. Mead’s farm. Although subdivided by Mead into one-half acre lots in 1835, the area developed slowly before the Civil War. 

In 1836 this neighborhood began as one of only two centrally-located urban subdivisions in Greenwich that pre-date the coming of the railroad in 1848. In contrast to the summer homes of wealthy New Yorkers on the Post Road, the concentration of predominantly Irish families who settled this area earned it the nickname “Fourth Ward” after the working–class immigrant neighborhood in lower Manhattan.

Greenwich’s scattered settlement pattern did not produce an acknowledged municipal focus until it entered into its most rapid period of growth between 1890 and 1930. All of the buildings in the municipal district were erected on vacant farmland in a short period between 1893 and 1938, an era when wealthy benefactors began to view Greenwich as their home.