
Why was Old Greenwich once called Sound Beach? Because for fifty-nine years, it was. When the railroad put a station here in 1872, the village took the name of its shoreline and became "Sound Beach" — a summer-resort brand for a summer-resort age. It kept the name until 1931, when the village asked for its history back and was rechristened Old Greenwich, a plain statement of fact: this was the oldest part of the town, the founding ground everything else grew from. Three names in three centuries — the Old Town, Sound Beach, Old Greenwich — and all three describe the same few streets between the brooks and the Sound.
In July 1640, Robert Feake, Daniel Patrick, and Elizabeth Fones Feake purchased the shore between the Asamuck and Tatomuck brooks — the founding of Greenwich, here.
Why People Visit Old Greenwich
Old Greenwich offers the Connecticut Gold Coast at its most low-key — a real shore village with a beach peninsula, a pond park, and a handful of streets of shops, plus the quiet distinction of being where Greenwich began. Visitors come for Tod's Point and the Sound, the founding history, and the unhurried village pace, and stay for the beaches, the coves, and the deep-rooted New England feel. It is refined, historic, and genuinely Connecticut.