New Canaan

New Canaan

New Canaan is part of Connecticut’s Gold Coast and is consistently listed as one of the wealthiest towns in the country, appearing in multiple rankings of the nation’s richest zip code. It is also known for its public school system, which in 2018 was ranked as the top public school system in Connecticut, and in 2008 the third-best in the country. With a population of 20,622, New Canaan is about an hour’s train ride from Manhattan. New Canaan is known for its wide range of architecture and vast public parks such as Waveny Park and a signature town center with classic boutiques, restaurants, New Canaan Playhouse, Elm Book store, toy store, coffee shops and more. Residents carol on God’s Acre every Christmas Eve, a town tradition since 1916. Waveny Park is 300 acres of fields, ponds and trails featuring indoor and outdoor sports courts, seasonal town pool plus a performing arts center. The centerpiece of the park is “the castle” built in 1912 which had been actor Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, The Addams Family) home. 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. 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. Using new materials and open floor plans, best captured by Johnson’s Glass House. The film The Ice Storm (1997) shows many of New Canaan’s modern homes, mostly a glass house sited on Laurel Road.