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New Canaan is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Stamford, on the Five Mile River. In 1900, 2,968 people lived in New Canaan, and in 1910, 3,667. The population was 19,395 at the 2000 census.

New Canaan has two Metro-North railroad stations. They are called "New Canaan" and "Talmadge Hill". Travel time to Grand Central Terminal is approximately one hour.

New Canaan is one of the most affluent communities in the United States.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 58.2 km² (22.5 mi²). 57.3 km² (22.1 mi²) of it is land and 0.9 km² (0.3 mi²) of it (1.56%) is water. The town is served by the Merritt Parkway, and by a spur line of the Metro North railroad. It is north of Stamford and west of Wilton. The downtown area consists of many restaurants, an old movie theater, antique shops, and a locally owned mens clothing store, Lamakers. There are also several churches in town, as well as the historic Roger Sherman Inn.

The town is bounded on the north by Lewisboro in Westchester County, New York, on the east by Wilton, on the southeast by Norwalk, on the south by Darien and on the southwest and west by Stamford.

History

In 1731, Connecticut's colonial legislature established Canaan Parish as a religious entity in northwestern Norwalk and northeastern Stamford. The right to form a Congregational church was granted to the few families scattered through the area. As inhabitants of Norwalk or Stamford, Canaan Parish settlers still had to vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, and file deeds in their home towns. Because Canaan Parish was not planned as a town, New Canaan, when incorporated in 1801, found itself without a central common, a main street or a town hall.

Until the Revolutionary War, New Canaan was primarily an agricultural community. After the war, New Canaan's major industry was shoe making. As New Canaan's shoe business gathered momentum early in the nineteenth century, instead of a central village, regional settlements of clustered houses, mill, and school developed into distinct district centers. Some of the districts were centered on Ponus Ridge, West Road, Oenoke Ridge, Smith Ridge, Talmadge Hill and Silvermine, a pattern which the village gradually outgrew.

With the 1868 advent of the railroad to New Canaan, many of New York City's wealthy residents discovered the quiet, peaceful area and built magnificent summer homes. Eventually, many of the summer visitors settled year-round, commuting to their jobs in New York City and creating the residential community that exists today.

The "Harvard Five" and modern homes

New Canaan was an important center of the modern design movement from the late 1940s through roughly the 1960s, when about 80 modern homes were built in town. About 20 have been torn down since then.* "Architect for All Seasons," by David Gurliacci, Fairfield County Business Journal, January 9, 2006.

"During the late 1940s and 50s, a group of students and teachers from the Harvard Graduate School of Design migrated to New Canaan ... and rocked the world of architectural design," according to an article in PureContemporary.com, an online architecture design magazine. "Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen and Eliot Noyes -- known as the Harvard Five -- began creating homes in a style that emerged as the complete antithesis of the traditional build. Using new materials and open floor plans, best captured by Johnson's Glass House, these treasures are being squandered as buyers are knocking down these architectural icons and replacing them with cookie-cutter new builds." PureContemporary.com accessed *, 2006

"Other architects, well known (Frank Lloyd Wright, for example) and not so well known, also contributed significant modern houses that elicited strong reactions from nearly everyone who saw them and are still astonishing today. ... New Canaan came to be the locus of the modern movement's experimentation in materials, construction methods, space, and form," according to an online description of The Harvard Five in New Canaan: Mid-Century Modern Houses, by William D. Earls.http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393731839/102-8451043-6653762?v=glance&n=283155 From a brief description on Amazon.com of "The Harvard Five in New Canaan: Mid-Century Modern Houses by Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes" by William D. Earls ISBN: 0393731839 to be published July 24, 2006, web page accessed July 2, 2006

Some other New Canaan architects designing modern homes were Victor Christ-Janer, John Black Lee and Allan Gelbin.* "Architect for All Seasons," by David Gurliacci, Fairfield County Business Journal, January 9, 2006.

The film The Ice Storm (1997) shows many of New Canaan's modern houses, both inside and out.

Education

New Canaan has five public schools:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges rating: Superb.

There were 3,980 students enrolled in grades K-12 in the 2003-2004 school year and the total expenditure was $50,786,700.

Class of 2003 statistics:

  • Average SAT I Verbal: 585
  • Average SAT I Math: 598
  • 48.3% of students attending 4 year colleges were accepted to schools ranked by Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges as Most Competitive and Highly Competitive.
  • Class of 2004 college choices

New Canaan also has private schools:

Points of interest

Notable institutions and organizations

Media

Local weeklies and a monthly

  • New Canaan-Darien magazine. This glossy monthly is owned by Moffly Publications.
  • New Canaan Advertiser. This weekly, the older of the two local newspapers, is owned by the Hersham Acorn chain of local weeklies, which is itelf headquartered in town.
  • New Canaan News-Review is a more recent weekly covering the town. It is part of the Brooks Community Newspaper chain now owned by Media News Group, which also owns the daily Connecticut Post in Bridgeport.

Daily newspapers in the area

Dramatic events, especially disasters or crimes, are likely to be covered first by area daily newspapers, although the Advocate provides little regular coverage to the town and the Hour provides next to none.

Notable residents, past and present

The CEO of SoftSoap also lives in New Canaan.

New Canaan in the media

Movies filmed in New Canaan

Internet Movie DataBase web page of films shot in New Canaan

Books about New Canaan

  • Public Schools Should Learn to Ski, by Stephen E. Rubin
  • The Ice Storm, by Rick Moody

References in popular culture

  • In the movie Fools Rush In, Mathew Perry's character grew up in New Canaan.

Demographics

As of the census2 of 2000, there were 19,395 people, 6,822 households, and 5,280 families residing in the town. The population density was 338.4/km² (876.5/mi²). There were 7,141 housing units at an average density of 124.6/km² (322.7/mi²). The racial makeup of the town was 95.27% White, 1.04% African American, 0.04% Native American, 2.29% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.38% from other races, and 0.98% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.74% of the population.

There were 6,822 households out of which 41.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 69.2% were married couples living together, 6.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 22.6% were non-families. 19.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.83 and the average family size was 3.26.

In the town the population was spread out with 31.2% under the age of 18, 3.3% from 18 to 24, 25.4% from 25 to 44, 26.6% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 91.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.7 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $141,788, and the median income for a family was $175,331. Males had a median income of $100,000 versus $53,924 for females. The per capita income for the town was $82,049. About 1.4% of families and 2.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.2% of those under age 18 and 2.2% of those age 65 or over.

References

External links

GOVERNMENT:

EDUCATION:

ARTS:

OTHER:

Fairfield County, Connecticut | Towns in Connecticut

New Canaan (Connecticut) | New Canaan

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "New Canaan, Connecticut".

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