Old Greenwich Connecticut — Retro Vintage History

What's with the woman who bought the point? It surprises almost everyone who walks the beach at Tod's Point: the land was first bought, in 1640, by a woman — in her own name. Elizabeth Fones Feake, a niece of the Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, was party to the purchase of the long peninsula then called Elizabeth's Neck, in one of the earliest instances of a woman holding individual title to real property anywhere in the New World. The Siwanoy who sold it knew the place as Monakewego — “shining sands.” That 1640 purchase was the first European settlement of what became Greenwich, and the village that grew up around it has been called the “Old Town” ever since. This quiet shoreline corner is, quite literally, where Greenwich began.

Old Greenwich is the original Greenwich. In 1640 Robert Feake, Captain Daniel Patrick, and their companions bought the land along this stretch of Long Island Sound from the Siwanoy people — a transaction recorded, in the language of the day, as a sale for twenty-five coats, and one that, like so many of its kind, began the long dispossession of the people who had lived here first. The settlers laid out farms and a landing on the sheltered coves, and the Feake-Ferris House, built around 1645 and still standing, survives as one of the oldest houses in Connecticut. For generations this was simply the “Old Town,” the founding ground from which the rest of Greenwich would grow.

Through the colonial centuries it stayed a farming and fishing village on the Sound. The Ferris family held Elizabeth's Neck for more than a hundred and fifty years; small wharves shipped produce and shellfish toward the New York markets; and during the Revolution the open water that made the village prosperous also made it vulnerable, as raiders crossed the Sound in shallow “wheelboats” between the Connecticut shore and Loyalist Long Island. It was a modest, hardworking shoreline community, shaped from the beginning by the tides, the coves, and the long peninsula reaching out into the Sound.

The railroad changed everything. When the New Haven line put a station here in 1872, the village took the name of its beach and became “Sound Beach,” and the trains brought a new kind of visitor. Through the late nineteenth century the shore filled with summer hotels and seaside cottages, and wealthy New Yorkers discovered the coves and the sand. The handsome Old Greenwich Railroad Station, built about 1894 and now on the National Register, dates from those resort years — the depot that tied this quiet corner of the Sound to the city forty-some miles down the line.

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.

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.

Our Old Greenwich logo carries Connecticut's oyster, above “Est. 1636,” the founding era of the Connecticut Colony — the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Connecticut shoreline place. Printed in a worn black-and-white that recalls an old oyster-crate label, the oyster is the shoreline in shorthand: briny, durable, and tied to the working water. The oyster is the through-line that links Old Greenwich to every other Connecticut town we make. What makes this one Old Greenwich is everything around it — the shining sands of Tod's Point, the pond at Binney Park, and the 1640 founding ground where Greenwich began.

Today Old Greenwich wears its history quietly but proudly — the original “Old Town” of Greenwich, a shore village of beaches and coves with four centuries of New England behind it. Its story runs from a Siwanoy fishing ground and the 1640 purchase of Elizabeth's Neck, through a colonial farming village and a railroad-era summer resort, to the gracious commuter village it is now. Our Old Greenwich designs gather that identity into wearable form — the oyster-and-1636 emblem, the Point, and the Sound. Old Greenwich, Connecticut: where Greenwich began in 1640, on the shining sands of Tod's Point.

Old Greenwich, Connecticut — Travel Guide

Visiting Old Greenwich Today

Old Greenwich sits at the southern, seaward edge of Greenwich, a small shoreline village gathered along Sound Beach Avenue between Long Island Sound and the Metro-North line. It is the original “Old Town” of Greenwich — an easy, walkable corner of beaches, coves, and a compact downtown, with the long peninsula of Tod's Point reaching out into the Sound at its edge.

Tod’s Point, Binney Park & the Village

For visitors looking for things to do in Old Greenwich, Connecticut:

• Spend a day at Greenwich Point Park — Tod's Point — the village's beach peninsula, with sand, tidal ponds, a walled garden, and Long Island Sound views.
• Walk Binney Park, the pond-and-lawn landscape given to the village in 1928, known for its model-sailboat races and fall foliage.
• See the Feake-Ferris House (c. 1645), one of the oldest houses in Connecticut, tied to the village's 1640 founding family.
• Stop at the Innis Arden Cottage on the Point, now the Bruce Museum Seaside Center, looking out over the Sound.
• Browse the small downtown along Sound Beach Avenue, a compact New England village center.
• Admire the 1894 Old Greenwich Railroad Station, a well-kept Victorian depot on the National Register of Historic Places.

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.

For deeper reading on the Old Greenwich history described here — the Siwanoy homeland and the “Monakewego” shore, the 1640 founding purchase of Elizabeth's Neck and Elizabeth Feake's individual title, the Feake-Ferris House of about 1645, the Revolutionary-era Sound raids, the railroad-era renaming as Sound Beach in 1872 and the 1894 depot, the Tod “Innis Arden” estate that became Greenwich Point Park in 1945, Binney Park's 1928 gift, and the 1931 renaming as Old Greenwich — it may be useful to consult (1) the Greenwich Historical Society and the Greenwich Library's local-history collections, (2) the Connecticut State Library and the Connecticut Historical Society, (3) the National Register of Historic Places file for the Old Greenwich (Sound Beach) Railroad Station, (4) the Town of Greenwich land and vital records, and (5) the Connecticut Office of the State Historic Preservation Officer. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) the Greenwich Chamber of Commerce, (2) the Connecticut Office of Tourism, (3) the Greenwich Department of Parks and Recreation for Greenwich Point and Binney Park, (4) the Bruce Museum for the Seaside Center, and (5) the National Weather Service for Long Island Sound marine advisories.