Everything changed around 1850, when the Palmer brothers, John and Robert, established their shipyard and Noank found its calling. The yard built the famous 'Noank smack' — a fast, able fishing sloop native to the village — and one of them, the Emma C. Berry of 1866, survives today as a National Historic Landmark, the oldest commercial sailing vessel of her kind still afloat. The C. H. Mallory and Spicer steamship interests added to the bustle from 1861. For a few decades a tiny Connecticut point was a genuine center of American shipbuilding.
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.
