What’s with Mianus Neck? Before it was Riverside, this corner of Greenwich was called Mianus Neck — a quiet 17th-century farming-and-oystering village on the lands lying by the Mianus River. The river, and the village, took their name from Mayn Myannos, a Munsee sachem; for generations the river was the main route in and out of eastern Greenwich. Then in 1869 two developers, the New York real-estate broker Jeremiah Atwater and the attorney Luke Vincent Lockwood, bought up the Neck, built a railroad station, and renamed the place “Riverside” — a prettier, sellable name to lure summer New Yorkers up the new line. The bet paid off. The oystermen’s neck became one of Fairfield County’s most refined railroad suburbs, and the old name survives mostly in the river that still borders it.
Riverside also keeps a genuine rarity. Carrying Riverside Avenue over the railroad tracks is the Riverside Avenue Bridge — a 19th-century truss built almost entirely of structural cast iron, the only surviving cast-iron bridge in Connecticut and one of very few left in the country. It began life in 1871 as part of a six-span railroad bridge over the Housatonic in Stratford, fabricated by the Keystone Bridge Company; when that bridge was replaced, a span was salvaged and re-erected here over the tracks in 1894. Elegant, ornate, and improbably durable, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.
Why People Visit Riverside
Riverside rewards visitors who like the quiet, watery side of the Gold Coast: sailboats on the Mianus, shaded streets, and a handful of real landmarks close together. Add the Sound-side parks and the easy ride to the city, and the genteel calm makes its own case.
