What's with Rowayton? Rowayton is Norwalk's village on the Sound — a Five Mile River harbor of oysters, sailboats, and art that runs its own affairs as the Sixth Taxing District. Forty miles from New York and a world apart, it is the Connecticut shore at its most distilled: a working river mouth, a village center you can walk end to end, and salt water at the bottom of every street.
The village has one gloriously improbable chapter: the first business computer was born here. In the old Farrell estate stables on Highland Avenue — "The Barn," part of the Rock Ledge estate listed on the National Register in 1977 — engineers of the Remington Rand Corporation developed the Remington Rand 409, the prototype that carried computing out of the laboratory and into the office, in the years when General Douglas MacArthur chaired the company's board. The stables became the Rowayton Community Center and Library in 1966; the village kept the story.
Why People Visit Rowayton
Rowayton offers the Connecticut shore at its most relaxed and characterful — sailing, art, and quiet beaches in a village that has kept its scale and its salt-water soul. Visitors come for the harbor and the shore parks and stay for the unhurried, distilled village that Norwalk keeps at its edge.
