North Stamford

Coordinates: 41°08′17″N 73°32′38″W / 41.138°N 73.544°W

Lake Drive, from a postcard sent in 1910

North Stamford is section of Stamford, Connecticut, USA, north of the Merritt Parkway. Often hilly and wooded, it is less densely developed than the rest of the city.

To the southeast is the Springdale section of Stamford, to the south is the Turn of River section and to the southwest is the Westover section of Stamford. To the west is the "back country" of Greenwich and to the north is Pound Ridge, New York. To the east is New Canaan.

High Ridge Road, in the area just south of the Merrit Parkway, is the largest shopping district near North Stamford. A shopping plaza and some surrounding stores are also nearby on Newfield Avenue, and downtown Springdale also offers nearby stores.

When Stamford's population began to grow during and after World War II, 30,000 new residents arrived from 1940 to 1960. "North Stamford developed with one- and two-acre zoning, looking just like Wilton or New Canaan," Janice Green, the manager of the William Pitt Real Estate office, told The New York Times in 1989. "Executives moved up there who had no connection with the factories and ethnic working-class neighborhoods downtown."[1]

Landmarks and institutions

City reservoirs are located in North Stamford, as are the Bartlett Arboretum and the Stamford Historical Society headquarters and museum.

Also in the neighborhood is the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, a 118-acre (0.48 km2) facility on Scofieldtown Road. The museum works with schools in Stamford, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Darien and Greenwich, and more than 10,000 students visit every year. In 2007 the museum and nature center started working with Aquarion, a water utility serving much of Fairfield County, in a program meant to educate children about water ecology and watershed protection.[2]

Buttonwood Manor, a Colonial-style house on an estate of 8 acres (32,000 m2), is in North Stamford. The original main house was built by Jacob Stevens in 1809, then sold it in 1821 to Gould Raymond. For 77 years the Raymond family farmed the land. By 1926 Mary Stella Tisdale Atwood had bought the house from Otto Sarrach and began restoring it. She sold the estate to William E. Stevenson, a Gold Medal winner in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris (setting a new world record of 3:16.0 as member of the American 400-meter relay team) and later a president of Oberlin College. While Stevenson and his wife were in England running American Red Cross operations in World War II, they rented the house to Dorothy Fields, a lyricist.[3]

Cemeteries

North Stamford contains numerous old cemeteries from the nineteenth century and before, some quite small and often with gravestones bearing elaborate engravings and even poetry.[4]

These old cemeteries are in North Stamford:[4]

William S. June, 1846, age 25:
Dear young friends, as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so you must be
Prepare for death & follow me

Mary E. Dann, 1861, age 26:
Dear husband and children and sisters, farewell
I go to the land of the blest
Where our parents and children dwell
Where soon we all may find rest.
Two bright little cherubs up there
Call out for their mother to come
Our mothers and children are there
Awaiting to welcome me home.
Then grieve not, dear loved ones, that I
Must leave this sad world and its woe
Tis to join with the loved ones on high
That I part with the loved ones below.
Hannah Jones Lockwood, 1842, age 4:
O Father dear, prepare to follow me
In Heaven your wife & sweet babes to see
Affliction sore this infant bare
Physicians aid was in vain
Till God did please to call her home
And freed her from her pain.
Oren S. Palmer, 1865, age 1:
Two more little hands
Close folded on the breast
One more little form
Is gently laid to rest.

Fire Department

The Stamford Fire Rescue Department's Fire Station #'s 8 and 9 serve the neighborhood, as well as the Turn of River Volunteer Fire Department Station #'s 1 and 2 and the Long Ridge Volunteer Fire Department's Station #'s 1 and 2.

Notable residents, past and present

Jackie Robinson in his now-retired number 42 jersey.

Notes

  1. ↑ Charles, Eleanor, "If You're Thinking of Living in: Stamford", The New York Times, August 20, 1989
  2. ↑ Gosier, Chris, "Environmental immersion: Water company and nature center form watershed education alliance", The Advocate, pp A9, A10, Stamford edition
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Nova, Susan, "Manor is rich with history: Offer has been accepted to buy 5,300-square-foot (490 m2) home", The Advocate Real Estate section, April 20, 2007, pp. R1, R4
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Majdalayny, Jeanne and Mulkerin, Jean, Poems in Stone in Stamford, Connecticut, published by the Stamford Historical Society, 1980
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 "If You're Thinking of Living In/North Stamford, Conn.; In a Bustling City, a Rural Haven" an article by Eleanor Charles in New York Times Real Estate section, February 1, 1998, accessed September 10, 2006
  6. ↑ "From the Archives" feature in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut, July 23, 2007, "25 years ago", "July 25, 1982" item; page A7

External links