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Stamford, Connecticut

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A city of Fairfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., in a township of the same name, in the south-western part of the state, on Long Island Sound, 331 m. (by rail) N.E. of New York City. Pop. of the city (1900), 15,997, of whom 4078 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 25,138; of the township, including the city (1900), 18,839; (1910), 28,836. The city is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway (which has other stations in the township at Glenbrook, Springdale and Talmadge Hill), by electric railway to Darien, Greenwich, &c., and by two lines of steamboats to New York City and ports on the Sound. The city is pleasantly situated with the Rippowam river flowing through it, the Mianus river on the west and the XXV. 25 Noroton on the east. It is the place of residence of many New York business men. Among its institutions are the Ferguson Library (1882; with 16,000 volumes in 1909), several private schools, a Y.M.C.A., the Stamford Hospital (private, 1893), two private sanatoria, the Convent of our Lady of Lourdes, St John's Church House, a day nursery (1902), with dispensary and kindergarten, and the Stamford Children's Home (1895). The Stamford and the Corinthian Yacht Clubs have club-houses here. Shippan Point, on the Sound, 11 m. south of the city, is a summer resort, near which the city bought land for a public park in 1906. Stamford's factory product in 1905 was valued at $5,890,416, 50.3% more than in 1900. The principal manufactures are builders' hardware, locks and keys (the works of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company are here), woollen goods, dye stuffs, &c. The township of Stamford, known until 1642 by the Indian name of Rippowam, was settled in 1641 by twenty-nine persons who for religious reasons seceded from the Wethersfield church and joined the colony of New Haven. Discontent with the religious policy of New Haven, however, caused a number of the Stamford citizens to withdraw and to found Hempstead, Long Island, and for the same reason many of the people of Stamford approved of the union of the New Haven colony and Connecticut by the charter of 1662; and in October 1662 Stamford submitted to Connecticut. Stamford was chartered as a borough in 1830 and as a city in 1894.

See E. B. Huntington, History of Stamford (Stamford, 1868); and C. B. Gillespie, Picturesque Stamford (Stamford, 1893).