About Ridgefield, Connecticut (CT)
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The Ridgefield School - 1909 Neumann Real Estate Keeler Tavern
  
Ridgefield is a town located in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the 300-year-old community is spread across 34 square miles. The town has a Metro-North railroad station called "Branchville" located in the southeast corner of the town.
Other locales within the town include Titicus, on Route 116 just north of the village; Ridgebury, in the northern section of town; Scotland, which is south of Ridgebury; Farmingville, northeast and east of the village; Limestone, northeast of the village; Flat Rock, south of the village; and Florida, just north of Branchville.
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In Ridgefield:
Ridgefield has nine public schools and two private schools. The six public elementary schools are Veterans Park, Branchville, Farmingville, Scotland, Barlow Mountain, and Ridgebury. Scotts Ridge (Ridgefield's newest school) and East Ridge are the town's two middle schools. The high school is Ridgefield High School.
Ridgefield's Roman Catholic school, Saint Mary, serves kindergarten through eighth grade. A private school, Ridgefield Academy, teaches preschool through eighth grade and is situated on a former turn-of-the-20th-Century estate on West Mountain. There are also various preschools and a Montessori school.
The Danbury Hospital serves the health needs of the town for emergency services, primary care services, and risk reduction and wellness. The Hospital is readily accessible from most parts of town through route 7 to Interstate 84. The Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association at 80 East Ridge offers (fee based) home health care, community wellness, and public health and safety programs.
History:
Ridgefield was first settled by English colonists in 1708 when a group of settlers purchased land from Chief Catoonah of the Ramapoo tribe. The town was incorporated under Royal Charter in 1709. The most notable 18th Century event was the Battle of Ridgefield. During this Revolutionary War skirmish a small colonial militia force led by, among others, General David Wooster, who died in the engagement, and Benedict Arnold whose horse was shot from under him. They faced a larger British force that had landed at Norwalk and was returning from a raid on the colonial supply depot in Danbury. Today, the dead from both sides are buried together in a small cemetery....."...foes in arms, brothers in death...". The Keeler Tavern, a local inn and museum, features a British cannonball still lodged in the side of the building. There are many other landmarks from the Revolutionary War in the town, with most along Main Street.
In the summer of 1781, the French army, under the Comte de Rochambeau marched through Connecticut, encamping in the Ridgebury section of town, where the first Catholic Mass in Ridgefield was offered.
For much of its three centuries, Ridgefield was a farming community. Among the important families in the 19th Century were the Rockwells and Lounsburys, which intermarried. They produced two Connecticut governors, George and Phineas Lounsbury. The Ridgefield Veterans Memorial Community Center, also called the Lounsbury House, on Main Street was built by Gov. Phineas Chapman Lounsbury around 1896 as his home.
In the late 1800s, spurred by the new railroad connection to its lofty village and the fact that nearby countryside reaches 1,000 feet above sea level, Ridgefield began to be discovered by wealthy New York City residents, who assembled large estates and built huge "summer cottages" throughout the higher sections of town. Among the more noteworthy estates were Col. Louis D. Conley's "Outpost Farm", which at one point totalled nearly 2,000 acres, some now Bennett's Pond State Park; Seth Low Pierrepont's "Twixthills", more than 600 acres, much now Pierrepont State Park; Frederic E. Lewis's "Upagenstit", 100 acres that became Grey Court College in the 1940s, but now mostly subdivision; and Col. Edward M. Knox's "Downesbury Manor", whose 300 acres included a 45-room mansion that Mark Twain often visited.
These and dozens of other estates became unaffordable and unwieldy during and after the Great Depression, and most were broken up. Many mansions were razed. In their place came subdivisions of one- and two-acre lots that turned the town into a suburban, bedroom community in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. However, strong planning and zoning has maintained much of the 19th and early 20th Century charm of the town, especially along its famous mile-long Main Street.
Right after World War II, Ridgefield was one of the locations considered for the United Nations secretariate building.
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