Sights in Connecticut Coast
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Peabody Museum of Natural History
Wannabe paleontologists will be thrilled by the dinosaurs at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
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Mystic Seaport Museum
From simple beginnings in the 17th century, the village of Mystic grew to become one of the great shipbuilding ports of the East Coast. In the mid-19th century, Mystic’s shipyards launched clipper ships, many from the George Greenman & Co Shipyard, now the site of Mystic Seaport Museum. Today, the museum covers 17 acres and includes more than 60 historic buildings, four tall ships and almost 500 smaller vessels. Some buildings in the museum were originally here, but, as with Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, many were transported from other parts of New England and arranged to recreate a resemblance to the past. Interpreters staff all the buildings and are all to…
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Hammonasset Beach State Park
Though not off the beaten path by any means, the two full miles of flat, sandy beach at Hammonasset Beach State Park handily accommodate summer crowds. This is the ideal beach at which to set up an umbrella-chair, crack open a book and forget about the world. The surf is tame, making swimming superb; restrooms and showering facilities are clean and ample; and a wooden boardwalk runs the length of the park. There is no entry charge in the off-season. Stroll the boardwalk all the way to Meigs Point at the tip of the peninsula and visit the Nature Center before heading out on a trail that meanders through saltwater marshes. Excellent bird-watching here. Hammonasset is a Nati…
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New Haven Green
New Haven’s spacious green has been the spiritual center of the city since its Puritan fathers designed it in 1638 as the prospective site for Christ’s Second Coming. Since then it has held the municipal burial grounds – graves were later moved to Grove Street Cemetery – several statehouses and an array of churches, three of which still stand. The 1816 Trinity Church is Episcopal and resembles England’s Gothic York Minster, featuring several Tiffany windows. The Georgian-style 1812 Center Church on the Green (United Church of Christ), a fine New England interpretation of Palladian architecture, harbors many colonial tombstones in its crypt. The 1814 United Churc…
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Monte Cristo Cottage
Part of a well-laid-out walking tour is Monte Cristo Cottage, the boyhood summer home of Eugene O’Neill, America’s only Nobel Prize–winning playwright. Near Ocean Beach Park in the southern districts of the city (follow the signs), the Victorian-style house is now a research library for dramatists. Many of O’Neill’s belongings are on display, including his desk. You might recognize the living room: it was the inspiration for the setting for two of O’Neill’s most famous plays, Long Day’s Journey into Night and Ah, Wilderness! Theater buffs should be sure to visit the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in nearby Waterford, which hosts an annual summer series of…
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Grove Street Cemetery
Three blocks north of the green, this cemetery holds the graves of several famous New Havenites behind its grand Egyptian Revival gate, including rubber magnate Charles Goodyear, the telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, lexicographer Noah Webster and cotton-gin inventor Eli Whitney. It was the first chartered cemetery in the country in 1797 and the first to arrange graves by family plots. Around the turn of the century, Yale medical students would sneak in at night to dig up bodies for dissection, but you can simply join the free walking tour at 11am on Saturdays.
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Tomb
The Tomb is not open to the public. This is the home of Yale’s most notorious secret society, the Skull & Bones Club, founded in 1832, and its list of members reads like a ‘who’s who’ of high-powered judges, financiers, politicians, publishers and intelligence officers. Stories of bizarre initiation rites and claims that the Tomb is full of stolen booty like Hitler’s silverware and the skulls of Apache warrior Geronimo and Mexican general Pancho Villa further fuel popular curiosity.
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Maritime Aquarium
This aquarium focuses on the marine life of the Long Island Sound, including sand tiger sharks, loggerhead turtles and harbor seals, whose daily feedings at 11:45am, 1:45pm and 3:45pm are a real treat. IMAX movies are also shown throughout the day for an additional fee. For a more hands-on experience, take a 2½-hour cruise on the research vessel Oceanic (per person $20.50). Cruises depart at 1pm daily in July and August, and on weekends in April through June and September.
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Henry B duPont Preservation Shipyard
At the Henry B duPont Preservation Shipyard you can watch large wooden boats being restored. Be sure not to miss the Wendell Building, which houses a fascinating collection of ships' figureheads and carvings. Close by is a small 'museum' for children seven and under. The Seaport also includes a small boat shop, jail, general store, chapel, school, pharmacy, sail loft, shipsmith and ship chandlery - all the sorts of places that you'd expect to find in a real shipbuilding town of 150 years ago.
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Nathan Hale Schoolhouse
Part of a well-laid-out walking tour is the tiny Nathan Hale Schoolhouse is one of the many Connecticut schoolhouses that bear the name of this peripatetic pedagogue. Hale (1755–76) is famous for his patriotic statement, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country, ’ as he was about to be hanged for treason by the British without trial. He taught in this schoolhouse before enlisting in the Connecticut militia.
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Yale University
Each year, thousands of high school students make pilgrimages to Yale University, nursing dreams of attending the country's third-oldest university, which boasts such notable alums as Noah Webster, Eli Whitney, Samuel Morse, and Presidents William H Taft, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush. You don't need to share the students' ambitions to take a stroll around the campus, which evokes the university's illustrious history and impact on American life.
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Sheffield Island Lighthouse
The Norwalk Islands lie a half-mile off the coast of SoNo, and are the playground of coastal birds. Admission to the historic Sheffield Island Lighthouse, activated in 1868, is included in the price of the summer-only ferry ride to see the birds. Or if you want to take matters into your own hands, you can kayak there. The Small Boat Shop leads two-hour, four-hour and all-day trips to the islands in the summer.
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Ocean Beach Park
- New London, USA
- Sights › Park
Part of a well-laid-out walking tour is at the southern end of Ocean Ave: Ocean Beach Park, a popular beach and amusement area with waterslides, a picnic area, miniature golf, an arcade, a swimming pool and an old-fashioned boardwalk. The parking fee ($9 on weekdays, $13 on weekends) includes admission for everyone in your car, or else it’s $5 for adults and $3 for kids. After Labor Day (early September), weekdays are free.
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Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Part of a well-laid-out walking tour is the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, a neoclassical building with exhibits that span the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, including impressive collections of early American silver and Asian, Greco-Roman and European paintings. Among the highlights are the American impressionists gallery and the charming doll and toy exhibit. There’s also a self-guided children’s art park on the grounds.
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Hempsted Houses
Part of a well-laid-out walking tour are two Hempsted Houses, the wood-framed older one (1678) is one of the best-documented 17th-century houses in the country. Maintained by the descendants of the original owners until 1937, it is one of the few 17th-century houses remaining in the area, having survived the burning of New London by Benedict Arnold and the British in 1781. The house is insulated with seaweed, of all things.
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Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum
This is one of the best surviving Second Empire–style country houses in the nation, so it’s no wonder the 62-room mansion was chosen as the set for the 2004 version of The Stepford Wives. The 2nd floor houses the Music Box Society International’s permanent collection of music boxes, viewable (and listenable) only if you’re on a tour. Tours leave every hour on the hour.
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Stepping Stones Museum for Children
This well-crafted museum is bursting with interactive, instructive fun, from the weather cycle to gravity to the principles of conservation. The Toddler Terrain is a hit with the under-three crowd. Across the parking lot from the museum is Devon’s Place, a playground designed with mentally and physically challenged children in mind, but it holds appeal for all.
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Bruce Museum
The Bruce Museum serves up a bit of everything, but there’s no suffering from cultural indigestion. Sculpture, photography and painting by impressionists from Cos Cob’s art colony (notably Childe Hassam) meld smoothly into exhibits on natural science and anthropology. The Bruce is also home to a variety of traveling exhibitions.
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Hygienic Art
- New London, USA
- Sights › Art
Done up in a Greek Revival style replete with a sculpture garden, mural plaza, fountains and a large performance area, Hygienic Art is centered on a gallery featuring exhibits in many media. It hosts poetry readings, film screenings and other events. The gardens and amphitheater are open during daylight hours.
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Whale Oil Row
On Huntington St right next to the St James' Church, Whale Oil Row features four identical white mansions (Nos 105, 111, 117 and 119) with imposing Doric facades built for whaling merchants in 1830. They're now private businesses not open to the public, but the exterior is impressive.
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Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Among the more compelling places to visit at Yale University is the state-of-the-art Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the world’s largest building devoted to rare books, which includes a 1455 Gutenberg Bible among its 600,000 manuscripts.
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Olde Mistick Village
Just south of I-95, this pseudo-colonial village green is centered on a Congregational church and surrounded by over 60 shops selling sportswear, gifts, crafts, jewelry and Lladró porcelain. Visitors unimpressed by the array can find refuge in the cinema.
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Yale University Art Gallery
America's oldest university art museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, boasts American masterworks by Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock, as well as a superb European collection that includes Vincent van Gogh's The Night Café.
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Amistad Memorial
The 14-foot bronze Amistad Memorial stands in front of City Hall on the spot where 55 kidnapped African slaves who had sought their freedom were imprisoned in 1839 while awaiting one of a series of trails that would ultimately release them.
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Mystic Aquarium
Mystic Aquarium is home to all manner of interesting sea creatures, and we're not talking just fish. The residents include penguins, sea lions and even a beluga whale! And where else can a kid pet a cownose ray?
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