The name caught up with the history in 1931, when Sound Beach was rechristened Old Greenwich — a recognition that this was, after all, the oldest part of the town. Through the mid-twentieth century it grew into the affluent commuter village it is now, a Metro-North ride from Manhattan, its small downtown gathered along Sound Beach Avenue. Yet the colonial homes, the old depot, the Point, and Binney Park endured, and the village kept the unhurried, deep-rooted feel of a place that has been lived in for nearly four centuries.
Two estates shaped the village that visitors know today. In the 1880s the banker and railroad financier J. Kennedy Tod built his “Innis Arden” estate out on Elizabeth's Neck, with a stone mansion, a boathouse, and gardens along the peninsula; in 1945 the town acquired the property, and Tod's Point became Greenwich Point Park — the beloved town beach, with its tidal ponds, walled garden, and holly grove, that locals still simply call “the Point.” Inland, the pond and lawns of Binney Park were given to the village in 1928 by Edwin Binney, the co-inventor of the Crayola crayon, who summered nearby.
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.
