The village that the shipwrights and fishing families built is remarkably intact. The Noank Historic District — listed on the National Register in 1979 — preserves a dense run of mid-to-late nineteenth-century cottages in Greek Revival, Gothic, and Stick-Eastlake styles, lining the winding lanes of the point with picturesque woodwork and iron fences. The Noank Baptist Church of 1867 still crowns the high ground, though its twin towers were lost in the great hurricane of 1938. And every year since 1876 the village has held one of the longest continuously running Memorial Day parades in the country.
Around the yards grew a fishing village. Noank ran a fleet of more than sixty vessels, many of them share-owned by the families who crewed them, and the harbor filled with the work of fishing, oystering, and lobstering. A velvet mill opened in 1905; the Connecticut State Lobster Hatchery took root around 1912; and the lobster shacks that still steam at the water's edge carry the same trade forward. Noank has always made its living from the Sound.
Why People Visit Noank
Noank rewards visitors who like their shoreline quiet and real — a working harbor instead of a boardwalk, a dense historic village instead of a strip. People come for the boatyards and the lobster shacks at the water's edge, for the walk through the cottage-lined historic district, and for the view out to the Sound from the end of the point. It is peaceful, photogenic, and unmistakably a Connecticut fishing village.
