Stamford Harbor Ledge Light, a 60-foot cast-iron sparkplug tower on Chatham Rock, was built in 1882, automated in 1953, and sold into private hands in 1955.
The town’s second century was quiet and prosperous in the way of Sound-shore towns. The Boston Post Road ran through it; the Stamford Advocate began printing in 1829 and calls itself the oldest business in the city; a steamboat line to New York opened in the 1820s, and the railroad arrived in the 1840s and never left. In 1820 the parish of Middlesex, on the eastern side, broke away as the town of Darien, and in 1830 the dense center around the harbor incorporated as a borough. Then, in October 1868, a young Philadelphia engineer named Henry R. Towne went into business with a lock inventor named Linus Yale Jr., and chose Stamford for the factory.
Why People Visit Stamford, CT
Stamford balances harbor and city — sailboats on the Sound, a downtown skyline, and four centuries of history from Rippowam to the rail line. It is a Gold Coast harbor town an hour from Manhattan, with the water, the parks, and that one-of-a-kind church on the hill. Increasingly it is also a town with a story to tell: the one that was asked to hang its witches in 1692 and signed a petition instead.
