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What’s with Mianus Neck? Before it was Riverside, this corner of Greenwich was called Mianus Neck — a quiet 17th-century farming-and-oystering village on the lands lying by the Mianus River. The river, and the village, took their name from Mayn Myannos, a Munsee sachem; for generations the river was the main route in and out of eastern Greenwich. Then in 1869 two developers, the New York real-estate broker Jeremiah Atwater and the attorney Luke Vincent Lockwood, bought up the Neck, built a railroad station, and renamed the place “Riverside” — a prettier, sellable name to lure summer New Yorkers up the new line. The bet paid off. The oystermen’s neck became one of Fairfield County’s most refined railroad suburbs, and the old name survives mostly in the river that still borders it.
What Atwater and Lockwood built still shapes the place. They laid out winding shoreline lanes, donated land for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in 1876, and tied Riverside to Manhattan with the New York, New Haven & Hartford line — an hour’s ride that turned a farming neck into a commuter’s Eden. Through the 1880s and into the new century, Victorian cottages and Shingle-style houses rose on leafy lots along Riverside Avenue, the old “Potato Road.” By the 1930s the neighborhood held some of the highest real-estate values in the region.
Why People Visit Riverside
Riverside rewards visitors who like the quiet, watery side of the Gold Coast: sailboats on the Mianus, shaded streets, and a handful of real landmarks close together. Add the Sound-side parks and the easy ride to the city, and the genteel calm makes its own case.
