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.
Today Rowayton is the Connecticut shore at its most distilled — a Five Mile River village of oyster heritage, sailboats, and art, governing its own small corner of the Sound. Its story runs from an Algonquian fishing ground through a shipwright hamlet, an oystering fleet, a steamboat resort, and a barn full of computer pioneers to the unhurried village of today. Wear a little of the village that kept its scale and its salt.
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.
