What's with Rowayton? Rowayton is Norwalk's village on the Sound — a Five Mile River harbor of oysters, sailboats, and art that runs its own affairs as the Sixth Taxing District. Forty miles from New York and a world apart, it is the Connecticut shore at its most distilled: a working river mouth, a village center you can walk end to end, and salt water at the bottom of every street.
European settlement came by way of Norwalk, founded in 1651, and the western shore where the Five Mile River met the Sound became a village of rocky farms and small wharves. For two hundred years it was known simply as Five Mile River — a working hamlet of shipwrights and oystermen, with a shipyard at what is now Pinkney Park and, by 1848, a hotel for the summer boarders who had begun to find the shore. The streetcar arrived in 1890, stitching the hamlet to South Norwalk and opening the summer trade wide.
Why People Visit Rowayton
Rowayton offers the Connecticut shore at its most relaxed and characterful — sailing, art, and quiet beaches in a village that has kept its scale and its salt-water soul. Visitors come for the harbor and the shore parks and stay for the unhurried, distilled village that Norwalk keeps at its edge.
