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The nineteenth century made Norwalk an industrial force twice over. In 1860, at the corner of North Main and Union Streets in South Norwalk, the firm of Crofut & Knapp produced the first American-made derby hat — and Norwalk grew into one of the nation’s great hat-making centers, more than thirty factories at the peak, crowning America in derbies and straw boaters. The same era’s fortunes built landmarks: LeGrand Lockwood, a Wall Street banker, raised the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in 1864–68 — one of the earliest and finest Second Empire country houses in America, a National Historic Landmark that predates the Vanderbilt palaces by a generation.
Offshore, the low string of the Norwalk Islands — Sheffield, Chimon, Cockenoe and their neighbors — shelters the harbor, and Sheffield Island Lighthouse has stood at the entrance since 1868, joined later by the Peck Ledge and Greens Ledge lights — three lighthouses for one harbor; a seasonal ferry still runs out to Sheffield Island, past the working oyster boats and the summer moorings.
Why People Visit Norwalk Connecticut
Norwalk offers an authentic working harbor, one of America's earliest Gilded Age mansions, a major aquarium, an annual oyster festival, an offshore island ferry to an 1868 lighthouse, and a nineteenth-century industrial waterfront reborn as a historic district. Visitors come for the SoNo galleries and restaurants, the Maritime Aquarium with its harbor seals and Sound-habitat exhibits, the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion and its preserved Second Empire interiors, the September Oyster Festival, the Sheffield Island ferry, and the simple shoreline pleasures of Calf Pasture Beach. It is a Connecticut shoreline city built on the harbor, the hat, and the oyster, with all three still visible if you know where to look.
