Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, Waterford gained a palace by the sea. Edward and Mary Harkness — heirs to a Standard Oil fortune — built Eolia, a forty-two-room Renaissance Revival mansion, on a green point above the Sound around 1907. They laid out formal gardens, later refined by the great landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, and spent their summers there among the boxwood and the salt air. Mary Harkness left the estate to Connecticut, and in the 1950s it became Harkness Memorial State Park — its lawns, gardens, and water tower now open to anyone who wants to walk down to the water.
Waterford's quiet coast drew artists as well as gardeners. In 1964 the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center opened here, named for the Nobel-laureate playwright who had grown up just down the shore in New London. Its summer playwriting workshops — the National Playwrights Conference — have launched a remarkable share of the American stage, and the O'Neill is now woven into the town's identity as deeply as its beaches. Nearby, the landmark buildings of Seaside State Park stand on their own green point, a striking piece of early-twentieth-century shoreline architecture preserved as open space.
Why People Visit Waterford
Visitors come to Waterford for an unspoiled stretch of the Connecticut coast: the gardens and mansion at Harkness, a famous playwriting center, granite-walled woods, and rocky beaches on Long Island Sound. It sits minutes from New London and the Mystic shoreline, with two state parks holding long reaches of open coast. Equal parts heritage and easy beach time, Waterford rewards anyone who likes the shore quiet and the history close at hand.
