The Communities of Greenwich, Connecticut

Map created for "Greenwich in the Twentieth Century" exhibition by Historical Society (Site Design, Inc.)

 

The history of the Town of Greenwich from its original founding to today can be traced through the names of communities formed within its fifty square miles during the town's more than three hundred and seventy years of development since 1640. Beginning in the seventeenth century, for example, communities' names were an admixture of English and Native American names. The eighteenth century names provide evidence of farmland divisions moving into the rocky terrain of backcountry Greenwich, bringing new churches, new schools and new parishioners.  The nineteenth century community names reveal the effects on the landscape of industrial and transportation developments which facilitated the middle of the century onset of European immigration and ethnic diversification throughout Greenwich. By the twentieth century the communities were established and the name changes came from within and were reflected in neighborhoods named for suburban subdivisions and created for and by the nascent resident commuters taking the two newly created super highways.  Most of these original community names remain.