South End of Stamford
Encyclopedia
The South End of Stamford
, Connecticut
is a rapidly growing neighborhood located at the southern end of the city, just south of the Downtown
neighborhood. It is expected to be greatly changed with redevelopment over the next decade. The South End is a peninsula bordered by Interstate 95
to the north and almost totally by water on all other sides, with few streets linking it to neighborhoods to the east and west. It contains some industrial tracts, several old factory buildings, many small homes and apartment buildings, and a number of office buildings. Most of the neighborhood has been designated as the South End Historic District which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
.
The Yale & Towne Lock Works
was a major manufacturer which, along with other industry in the area, provided employment and shaped the neighborhood. The oldest structure in the district is the Peter DeMill House. Other notable buildings are Number 715 on Atlantic Street, a tenement building, and the Holy Name Rectory. The historic district includes the Pulaski Street Bridge, a wrought-iron lenticular through-truss bridge over the Rippowam River
.
"The area of Stamford known for many years as Hoytville was owned by George Hoyt, a real estate agent and the largest property owner in the city in the 1870s," wrote Susan Nova in an article in The Advocate of Stamford. The South End was the manufacturing heart of the city in the nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries.
Most of the South End, previously owned by Greenwich
-based Antares, which began a multi-use project on 82 acres (331,842.5 m²) "...abruptly handed the project it spearheaded to Building and Land Technology L.L.C. BLT signed on to the $3 billion-plus project earlier [in 2008] as a co-developer, and announced a $200 million recapitalization of the project," according to the Fairfield County Business Journal. "They showed great vision in assembling and entitling such an extraordinary piece of ground," said Carl Kuehner III, chief executive of BLT, in a prepared statement announcing the change. "Harbor Point
incorporates the best in innovative urban design, community planning and technologically advanced environmental design."
Linus Yale, Jr.
introduced some combination safe locks and key-operated cylinder locks around 1862. Then in 1868, he and Henry Robinson Towne
founded the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company in the South End to produce cylinder locks. Yale died later that year. The Yale & Towne lock company manufactured locks there (giving Stamford its early nickname, "Lock City"). And other manufacturing businesses were sited there.
In 1938, the neighborhood was severely flooded by a hurricane that swept through southern New England
. Since then, barriers have been constructed in Stamford Harbor to prevent similar flooding.
Corporation has a long history in the South End. In 1917, Walter Bowes
moved his operations there, and in 1920 combined his firm with another to form Pitney Bowes. The company had manufacturing operations in the neighborhood for decades and its 422000 square feet (39,205.1 m²) corporate headquarters is located at the southern end of the triangular peninsula at 1 Elmcroft Road, where about 900 people work.
Stamford Fire Rescue
Department Firefighters used 1 million gallons of water in three hours. Then the water mains ran out and water from the nearby harbor had to be pumped in to douse the flames. The fire department spent $25,000 in overtime to put out the fire.
The complex at 735 Canal Street had been rented out by Antares Investment Partners of Greenwich to various businesses, including about 100 antiques dealers.
The blaze started as a fire on a workbench in a piano shop, although city fire marshals never determined the exact cause. City investigators found Antares had not fixed the sprinkler system, although it knew the system was broken when it bought the building in October 2005 from Heyman Properties of Westport
. To fix it would have required cutting off the heat in the building as a new heating system was installed, and Antares was waiting until later in the spring or summer for that, Bruce Macleod, operations chief at Antares, had said, according to The Advocate
, Stamford's daily newspaper. Heyman officials knew of the sprinkler system problems "and did nothing to fix them for years, the city's chief fire marshal said in April," The Advocate reported. The sprinkler system had broken in the 1990s, when heat was turned off in vacant parts of the building, causing water in the sprinkler system to freeze, cracking the pipes.
The antiques dealers filed a class-action lawsuit against Antares and the piano shop in July 2006.
The Stamford train station
and train tracks, along with Interstate 95
, separate the South End from Downtown Stamford
. Since 2000, real estate near train stations in southwestern Connecticut has been recognized as valuable for office and residential space, and plans are underway for several office buildings near the station in the South End.
In 2008, Building and Land Technology (BLT) purchased 82 acres (331,842.5 m²), roughly the northern half of the South End, including both the old Yale & Towne site and the site of the former coal gasification plant off Washington Boulevard from Antares. The "Lofts at Yale and Towne", as they are now called, opened in May 2010, on property that once was part of the Yale lock factory located on Henry Street. In mid to late 2010 buildings at 100 and 101 Washington Boulevard were completed and are now home to the luxury apartment complex 101 Park Place and the new office headquarters of Building and Land Technology.
The 20 acres (80,937.2 m²) Yale & Town site will have 300000 square feet (27,870.9 m²) of retail space in new buildings off Canal Street, along with the 225 apartments at the "Lofts at Yale and Towne" located in a century-old, six-story factory building on Henry Street, according to plans Antares presented to the city Zoning Board in early 2007.
About 4,000 housing units are planned for the development, along with some retail and office space. Antares had originally said the retail space in its plans was only to service the South End neighborhood, but in summer of 2006 it submitted a proposal to the city Planning Board for 500000 square feet (46,451.5 m²). The Downtown Special Services District objected, and officials of that organization told the Planning Board at a hearing on August 10, 2006 that the retail space could hurt Downtown stores.
In 2009, Pitney Bowes paid an engineering consultant to study traffic in the South End, particularly in connection with plans for new office buildings and residences. According to the study, the new developments will clog traffic in the neighborhood, even with the planned improvements to Washington Boulevard and Atlantic Street (including reconstruction of the railroad underpasses of Atlantic and Canal streets) in the South End.
Department's Fire Station # 2 serves the neighborhood.
Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643, making it the fourth largest city in the state and the eighth largest city in New England...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
is a rapidly growing neighborhood located at the southern end of the city, just south of the Downtown
Downtown Stamford, Connecticut
Downtown Stamford is the central business district of the city of Stamford, Connecticut, USA. It is an economically thriving area of the city, with major retail establishments, a shopping mall, a university campus, the headquarters of major corporations and fortune 500 companies, as well as other...
neighborhood. It is expected to be greatly changed with redevelopment over the next decade. The South End is a peninsula bordered by Interstate 95
Interstate 95 in Connecticut
Interstate 95, the main north–south Interstate Highway on the East Coast of the United States, runs in a general east–west compass direction for 111.57 miles in Connecticut from the Rhode Island state line to the New York State line. I-95 Southbound from East Lyme to the New York State...
to the north and almost totally by water on all other sides, with few streets linking it to neighborhoods to the east and west. It contains some industrial tracts, several old factory buildings, many small homes and apartment buildings, and a number of office buildings. Most of the neighborhood has been designated as the South End Historic District which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
Historic district
The South End Historic District covers a 177.1 acres (71.7 ha) area of the South End neighborhood. The district includes 449 buildings, most dating from the 1870s to the 1930s, and also "an early naturalistic cemetery, and an iron bridge."The Yale & Towne Lock Works
Yale (company)
Yale is a lock manufacturer owned by Assa Abloy. It is associated with the pin tumbler lock, which is often known as the Yale lock.- History :...
was a major manufacturer which, along with other industry in the area, provided employment and shaped the neighborhood. The oldest structure in the district is the Peter DeMill House. Other notable buildings are Number 715 on Atlantic Street, a tenement building, and the Holy Name Rectory. The historic district includes the Pulaski Street Bridge, a wrought-iron lenticular through-truss bridge over the Rippowam River
Rippowam River
The Rippowam River is a river in Fairfield County, Connecticut. It drains a watershed area of and flows for from Ridgefield to Long Island Sound, which it enters in Stamford's harbor....
.
History
The South End was one of the first sections of Stamford to be cleared and held in common by the original settlers from 1641 to 1665. By 1699 it and other sections of the town had been apportioned to individual land owners."The area of Stamford known for many years as Hoytville was owned by George Hoyt, a real estate agent and the largest property owner in the city in the 1870s," wrote Susan Nova in an article in The Advocate of Stamford. The South End was the manufacturing heart of the city in the nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries.
Most of the South End, previously owned by Greenwich
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
-based Antares, which began a multi-use project on 82 acres (331,842.5 m²) "...abruptly handed the project it spearheaded to Building and Land Technology L.L.C. BLT signed on to the $3 billion-plus project earlier [in 2008] as a co-developer, and announced a $200 million recapitalization of the project," according to the Fairfield County Business Journal. "They showed great vision in assembling and entitling such an extraordinary piece of ground," said Carl Kuehner III, chief executive of BLT, in a prepared statement announcing the change. "Harbor Point
Harbor Point (Stamford)
Harbor Point is located in the South End section of Stamford, Connecticut, in southwestern Fairfield County. It is made up of five distinct areas each centered around a park or waterfront feature. It is currently one of the largest redevelopment projects in the nation. Once development is complete...
incorporates the best in innovative urban design, community planning and technologically advanced environmental design."
Linus Yale, Jr.
Linus Yale, Jr.
Linus Yale, Jr. was an American mechanical engineer and manufacturer, best known for his inventions of locks, especially the cylinder lock. His locks are still widely distributed in today’s society, and constitute a majority of personal locks and safes. Linus Yale, Jr. was born in Salisbury, NY....
introduced some combination safe locks and key-operated cylinder locks around 1862. Then in 1868, he and Henry Robinson Towne
Henry R. Towne
Henry Robinson Towne was an American mechanical engineer and businessman.-Early life:Henry R. Towne was the son of John Henry and Maria T. Towne. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1862, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall, but did not complete a degree...
founded the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company in the South End to produce cylinder locks. Yale died later that year. The Yale & Towne lock company manufactured locks there (giving Stamford its early nickname, "Lock City"). And other manufacturing businesses were sited there.
In 1938, the neighborhood was severely flooded by a hurricane that swept through southern New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. Since then, barriers have been constructed in Stamford Harbor to prevent similar flooding.
Pitney Bowes
The Pitney BowesPitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes Inc. is a Stamford, Connecticut-based manufacturer of software and hardware and a provider of services related to documents, packaging, mailing, and shipping, collectively referred to as mailstream. The company has approximately 36,000 employees worldwide. It is one of 87 existing...
Corporation has a long history in the South End. In 1917, Walter Bowes
Walter Bowes
Walter Bowes was an English-born industrialist and sportsman who came to fame in the United States as the co-founder of Pitney Bowes....
moved his operations there, and in 1920 combined his firm with another to form Pitney Bowes. The company had manufacturing operations in the neighborhood for decades and its 422000 square feet (39,205.1 m²) corporate headquarters is located at the southern end of the triangular peninsula at 1 Elmcroft Road, where about 900 people work.
April 2006 fire
The biggest fire in Stamford's history started on April 3, 2006 in Building 15 of the old Yale & Towne factory buildings. The fire spread to another, 17500 square feet (1,625.8 m²) building housing several antiques dealers. Dark clouds of smoke formed over the scene, visible from miles away. About 200 residents from homes on Pacific and Henry streets were evacuated. The biggest casualty was a firefighter who suffered a minor knee sprain.Stamford Fire Rescue
Stamford Fire Rescue
The Stamford Fire and Rescue Department provides fire suppression and rescue, as well as first-responder emergency medical services alongside five volunteer fire departments to the City of Stamford, Connecticut.-Personnel profile:...
Department Firefighters used 1 million gallons of water in three hours. Then the water mains ran out and water from the nearby harbor had to be pumped in to douse the flames. The fire department spent $25,000 in overtime to put out the fire.
The complex at 735 Canal Street had been rented out by Antares Investment Partners of Greenwich to various businesses, including about 100 antiques dealers.
The blaze started as a fire on a workbench in a piano shop, although city fire marshals never determined the exact cause. City investigators found Antares had not fixed the sprinkler system, although it knew the system was broken when it bought the building in October 2005 from Heyman Properties of Westport
Westport, Connecticut
-Neighborhoods:* Saugatuck – around the Westport railroad station near the southwestern corner of the town – a built-up area with some restaurants, stores and offices....
. To fix it would have required cutting off the heat in the building as a new heating system was installed, and Antares was waiting until later in the spring or summer for that, Bruce Macleod, operations chief at Antares, had said, according to The Advocate
The Advocate (Stamford)
The Advocate is a seven-day daily newspaper based in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. The paper shares a publisher and editor with the Greenwich Time; both are owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation, a multinational corporate media conglomerate with $4 billion in revenues.The Advocate circulates...
, Stamford's daily newspaper. Heyman officials knew of the sprinkler system problems "and did nothing to fix them for years, the city's chief fire marshal said in April," The Advocate reported. The sprinkler system had broken in the 1990s, when heat was turned off in vacant parts of the building, causing water in the sprinkler system to freeze, cracking the pipes.
The antiques dealers filed a class-action lawsuit against Antares and the piano shop in July 2006.
Redevelopment plans
Stamford (Metro-North station)
The Stamford Metro-North Railroad station, officially known as the Stamford Transportation Center serves commuters both leaving and entering Stamford, Connecticut via the New Haven Line. Some Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains also stop at Stamford....
and train tracks, along with Interstate 95
Interstate 95
Interstate 95 is the main highway on the East Coast of the United States, running parallel to the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Florida and serving some of the most populated urban areas in the country, including Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore,...
, separate the South End from Downtown Stamford
Downtown Stamford, Connecticut
Downtown Stamford is the central business district of the city of Stamford, Connecticut, USA. It is an economically thriving area of the city, with major retail establishments, a shopping mall, a university campus, the headquarters of major corporations and fortune 500 companies, as well as other...
. Since 2000, real estate near train stations in southwestern Connecticut has been recognized as valuable for office and residential space, and plans are underway for several office buildings near the station in the South End.
In 2008, Building and Land Technology (BLT) purchased 82 acres (331,842.5 m²), roughly the northern half of the South End, including both the old Yale & Towne site and the site of the former coal gasification plant off Washington Boulevard from Antares. The "Lofts at Yale and Towne", as they are now called, opened in May 2010, on property that once was part of the Yale lock factory located on Henry Street. In mid to late 2010 buildings at 100 and 101 Washington Boulevard were completed and are now home to the luxury apartment complex 101 Park Place and the new office headquarters of Building and Land Technology.
The 20 acres (80,937.2 m²) Yale & Town site will have 300000 square feet (27,870.9 m²) of retail space in new buildings off Canal Street, along with the 225 apartments at the "Lofts at Yale and Towne" located in a century-old, six-story factory building on Henry Street, according to plans Antares presented to the city Zoning Board in early 2007.
About 4,000 housing units are planned for the development, along with some retail and office space. Antares had originally said the retail space in its plans was only to service the South End neighborhood, but in summer of 2006 it submitted a proposal to the city Planning Board for 500000 square feet (46,451.5 m²). The Downtown Special Services District objected, and officials of that organization told the Planning Board at a hearing on August 10, 2006 that the retail space could hurt Downtown stores.
In 2009, Pitney Bowes paid an engineering consultant to study traffic in the South End, particularly in connection with plans for new office buildings and residences. According to the study, the new developments will clog traffic in the neighborhood, even with the planned improvements to Washington Boulevard and Atlantic Street (including reconstruction of the railroad underpasses of Atlantic and Canal streets) in the South End.
Fire Department
The Stamford Fire RescueStamford Fire Rescue
The Stamford Fire and Rescue Department provides fire suppression and rescue, as well as first-responder emergency medical services alongside five volunteer fire departments to the City of Stamford, Connecticut.-Personnel profile:...
Department's Fire Station # 2 serves the neighborhood.
In popular culture
- Part of Elia Kazan'sElia KazanElia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
1947 film BoomerangBoomerang (1947 film)Boomerang! is a 1947 film based on the true story of a vagrant who was accused of murder, only to be found innocent through the efforts of the prosecutor...
was shot in the South End, particularly at St. Luke's Chapel, and nearly all of the rest of the movie was shot in Stamford, especially the Downtown section. - The musicians MobyMobyRichard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
and Battery Jackson once lived in some of the abandoned factory space in the South End.
In the South End
- Koscusko Park, a city park — at the southern tip of the peninsula
- CTE Inc., an anti-poverty agency — 34 Woodlawn Avenue
- South End Branch of Ferguson Library — 34 Woodlawn Avenue
- Ponus Yacht Club
- Woodlawn Cemetery, a large, old cemetery — in the southeast part of the neighborhood
In the South End
- South End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone
- Ponus Yacht Club
- CTE Inc., an anti-poverty agency
- Ferguson Library South End Branch