Our Old Greenwich logo carries Connecticut's oyster, above "Est. 1636," the founding era of the Connecticut Colony — the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Connecticut shoreline place. Printed in a worn black-and-white that recalls an old oyster-crate label, the oyster is the shoreline in shorthand: briny, durable, and tied to the working water. The oyster is the through-line that links Old Greenwich to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Old Greenwich is everything around it — the shining sands of Tod's Point, the pond at Binney Park, and the 1640 founding ground where Greenwich began.
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.
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.
