Darien, Connecticut Totally Explained

Everything about Darien Ct totally explained

Darien is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. A relatively small community on Connecticut's "Gold Coast", it's one of the most affluent towns in the United States.
   Situated between the small cities of Norwalk and Stamford, the town is a bedroom community with relatively few office buildings. Most workers commute to the adjacent cities, and many also work in New York City. Two Metro North railroad stations — Noroton Heights and Darien — link the town to Grand Central Terminal and the rest of the New Haven Line. Although Darien has an increasingly vibrant downtown, residents often shop at the big-box stores and chain stores in neighboring Norwalk and Stamford. For recreation, the town has some small parks, two small beaches on Long Island Sound and many country clubs, a couple of which are the town's two largest taxpayers.
   With a median home price of approximately $1 million, Darien is one of the most expensive places to live in North America, and was rated one of the best places to live in America by CNN in 2005.
   The public library in Darien, the Darien Library

, has consistently ranked in the top ten of its category in the HAPLR (Hennen's American Public Library Ratings) Index of libraries.

Local pronunciation of the town name

Contrary to the "Darien" entries in all dictionaries ("DAIRy-yen"), the vast majority of town residents pronounce the name of the community "Dairy-ANN", with the stress on the last syllable. Evonne Klein, the first selectwoman, pronounces it that way and says that's the way she hears it pronounced by "99 percent" of residents. The way locals pronounce it, it rhymes with "Mary Ann," not "Marion."
As a counterpoint, at least one townsperson thinks that dair-e-en, with the middle syllable a long e sound and an emphasis on both the first and last syllable, is the typical pronunciation. A strong minority pronounce it to rhyme with Mary Ann. Almost no one locally calls Darien, "Darion" (rhymes with Marion). "You can always tell when someone isn't from here because they do pronounce it the way it’s spelled," Louise Berry, director of the town library, said in a 2006 interview.
The town name was "frequently pronounced Dairy Ann" at least as far back as 1913, as reported in a travel book published that year.

Government and politics

See: Government and politics of Darien, Connecticut Elected bodies in the town government are a five-member Board of Selectmen, a nine member Board of Education, a seven-member Board of Finance, a six-member Planning and Zoning Commission, three-member Board of Assessment Appeals, and a 100-member, nonpartisan Representative Town Meeting. The town has several elective offices as well: the town clerk, probate judge, registrar of voters, tax collector and treasurer.
The Board of Finance approves financial measures, including the town budget; the Board of Education controls the town's public schools; the Representative Town Meeting is the main legislative body of the town.
As of December 1, 2005, the town had 12,099 registered voters, with 6,445 Republicans (53.1 percent), 1,940 Democrats (16 percent) and 3,703 unaffiliated voters (30.6 percent). Darien is primarily a Republican town, voting for George Bush in the last 2 elections, but now has a Democrat in office as First Selectwoman. In 2003, Evonne Klein replaced Robert Harrel as first selectman, becoming the first Democrat to win the post in 14 years. Klein was re-elected in 2005 and again in 2007.

Post 53

An ambulance service, known as "Darien EMS – Post 53" is the only ambulance service in the nation staffed and run entirely by high school student volunteers.
The service provides emergency care at no cost to the patient, funded entirely by private donations from town residents. Teenagers are allowed to perform patient care due to the fact that Connecticut is one the few states in the nation which allows Emergency medical technicians to be certified at age 16.
Supervised by trained adults, Post 53 lets in 15 teenagers a year to join the crew. "Each student receives at least 150 hours of training for basic certification as emergency medical technicians; by their senior year, some even qualify to drive the ambulance."

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 14.8 square miles (38.4 km²), of which, 12.9 square miles (33.3 km²) of it's land and 2.0 square miles (5.2 km²) of it (13.41%) is water. The town has four exits on Interstate 95 and its northern border runs near to the Merritt Parkway. It also has two Metro North railroad stations for commuter trains into New York City, with a 38-39 mile commute of 46-50 minutes from Noroton Heights, 49-53 from Darien. Most trains run non-stop after Stamford into New York City's 125th Street then Grand Central Terminal. The central part of town is on US Route 1, known locally as the Boston Post Road, or Post Road for short. Commercial zoning is extremely limited outside of this town-wide strip.
Darien is bordered on the west by Stamford, on the north by New Canaan, and on the east by Norwalk. On the south it faces Long Island Sound. It is part of the "panhandle" of Connecticut sticking out into New York state. The town has of coastline and five harbors.

Sections of the Town

In addition to some small neighborhoods, the larger divisions of the town are Noroton (roughly in the southwest corner of town), Noroton Heights (roughly north of Interstate 95 to Middlesex Rd with an eastern boundary somewhere east of Noroton Avenue), and Tokeneke, in the southeastern end of town.
   The name "Noroton" originates from an Indian word assigned to the river along Darien's border with Stamford. This section of Darien is defined by two peninsulas that claw their way into Long Island Sound, their curved appendages protecting enough coves and inlets to make the area a haven for beachgoers and sailors. The shorter of the peninsulas, Noroton Neck, is divided into shore communities like Noroton Bay and Pratt Island.
   The area became Middlesex Parish in 1737. It was incorporated as the Town of Darien in 1820. Tories raided the town several times during the American Revolution, at one point taking 26 men in the parish prisoner for five months, including the Rev. Moses Mather, pastor of the parish. The Tory-Patriot conflict in Darien is the setting for the novel Tory Hole, the first book by children's author Louise Hall Tharp.
   According to the Darien Historical Society, the name Darien was decided upon when the residents of the town couldn't agree on a name to replace Middlesex Parish, many families wanting it to be named after themselves. A sailor who had traveled to Darién, Panama, then part of Colombia, suggested the name Darien, which was eventually adopted by the people of the town.
   Until the advent of the railroad in 1848, Darien remained a small, rural community of about 1,000. After the Civil War, the town became one of the many resorts where prosperous New Yorkers built summer homes. A few daily commuters to New York City then were forerunners of the many who have settled here and changed Darien into a residential suburb of metropolitan New York.

Gentleman's Agreement

Laura Z. Hobson's bestselling 1947 novel Gentleman's Agreement, set in Darien, publicized the use of covenants to prevent home sales to Jewish people.

Education

Darien has five Elementary Schools: Hindley School, Holmes School, Ox Ridge School, Royle School, and Tokeneke School. A $27 million addition was completed in 2000 to the town's middle school, Middlesex Middle School, and a new $73 million campus for Darien High School was completed in the fall of 2005.

Transportation

The town is served by two train stations, the Noroton Heights and the other in downtown Darien. The Connecticut Turnpike runs through town, as does the Post Road, U.S. Route 1. Just to the north of town, the Merritt Parkway, Route 15 runs roughly parallel to the northern border between Darien and New Canaan. The Talmadge Hill railroad station is just north of the border as well. Along with the Post Road, major east-west thoroughfares in town are West Avenue and Middlesex Road. Major north-south roads are Hoyt Street, Hollow Tree Ridge Road, Nearwater Lane, Noroton Avenue, Middlesex Road, Mansfield Avenue and Brookside Road.
   Interstate 95 has rest stops in Darien both for the southbound and northbound lanes. The state Department of Transportation has added "speed change" lanes between entrances and exits up to Exit 10 (and points westward). The phase of the highway widening from Exit 9 to Exit 10, at a cost of $7.5 million, is expected to be complete by October 2007, state Transportation officials said in August of that year. The state is in the process of planning more such lanes through the rest of the highway in town in a project expected to cost $24.5 million. About 150,000 vehicles pass Exit 12 each day, according to the state Department of Transportation. The state was considering closing the southbound entrance for Exit 12 in 2008 during work on the project.
   Chapter 14 of English author Nigel Williams 1994 travelogue From Wimbledon to Waco tells of his difficulties in reaching Darien from Interstate 95.
   In December 2007 a 15-month, $5.5 million project was completed to add fourth (or "operational") lanes in each direction between the entrances and exits at Exits 10 and 11 in Darien. An earlier project added a fourth lane on the southbound side from the entrance at Exit 10 to Exit 8. After that lane was added, a state Department of Transportation study concluded that accidents were down on that stretch of the highway by 20 percent, amounting to about 160 fewer accidents per year. Construction of operational lanes at exits 11, 12, and 13 was expected to begin in the late spring of 2008.

Local media

Darien is served by two local weeklies: Darien News-Review

and the Darien Times

. Other newspapers from towns close to Darien, such as The Advocate

, are read and sold in Darien. (The town is covered in the Stamford edition of the paper; there's also a Norwalk edition.) New Canaan Darien Magazine

is a monthly published by Moffly Publications. The Topix.net website collects stories about Darien from various news organization websites. Most public meetings are filmed for later broadcast by Cablevision's Channel 79

Government Access. Educational Access channel 78 serves the community by bringing news about the schools including coverage of school sporting events.

Recreation

Darien Y — the local YMCA, offers more than 300 programs.
YWCA of Darien-Norwalk is located in Darien.
The Depot — an adult-supervised youth center for town teenagers in the former Noroton Heights Railroad Station building since the organization's founding in 1989. A student board runs the day-to-day programming; an adult board focuses on fundraising, operations management and capital building projects.

Parks and beaches

Cherry Lawn Park — 27.5 acres, 120 Brookside Road

Weed Beach — 22.12 acres at 155 Nearwater Lane, Noroton

Pear Tree Point Beach — 7.95 acres at 127 Pear Tree Point Road

Woodland Park Nature Preserve — 64.717 acres on Middlesex Road

Baker Park — 11.72 acres at 75 Noroton Ave. (site of the former Baker School)

Frate Park — 0.83 acres at the corner of Middlesex Road and Leroy Avenue

McGuane Park — 7.5 acres, 221 Noroton Ave.

Selleck's Woods Nature Preserve — 28.093 acres on Little Brook Road

Stony Brook Park — 11.3 acres on Ledge Road

Town Hall and Holahan Fields — 10 acres at 2 Renshaw Road

Tilly Pond Park — 8.651 acres on Lakeside Avenue

Restricted membership clubs

Country Club of Darien — The club has the second-largest estimated property value of any entity in town, with $23.2 million in assessed value (equal to 70 percent of estimated actual value) behind only the Wee Burn Country Club.

Darien Boat Club — founded in the late 1940s, the club's membership has grown from a few charter members to more than 850, as well as their families.

Noroton Yacht Club — Former members of "the world-renowned" club "have included two America's Cup skippers." The club runs the largest junior sailing program in the county.

Piedmont Club — Not a country club, the "Società Umberto Principe di Piemonte, Inc." was organized July 15, 1916 and "a well-appointed and commodious clubhouse" just off Noroton Avenue was erected in 1923, according to a town history published in 1935.

Tokeneke Club — When developers of Tokeneke were trying to sell real estate there, they found that ensuring access to a beach removed some hesitation on the part of prospective buyers, so they founded the Tokeneke Beach Club in 1907, acquiring "a small stretch of shore on which stood a dilapidated double-decker bathhouse and a broken pier," soon replaced. The club's original wooden buildings caught fire at a Saturday night party in 1932 and burned to the ground; replacement buildings were later battered by hurricanes.

Wee Burn Country Club — formed in 1895, it's the first organized golf club in the state and "either the second or third in the United States." The name of the club was taken from a small stream, Stony Brook, which ran through the old grounds. Originally a small house on the Post Road in Noroton (across the street from St. Luke's Episcopal Church) was rented for a clubhouse and nearby land for a seven-hole course was rented. The lease stipulated that the links couldn't prevent the landlord from continuing to use the fields as pasture for his cows. Eventually more land was bought on Hollow Tree Ridge Road and the course was enlarged to nine holes and then 18 by (at the latest) the 1930s. The club is the largest taxpayer in Darien, with an assessed property value (equal to 70 percent of estimated value) of $29.8 million.

Woodway Country Club — founded in 1916 when some members of the Wee Burn Country Club decided the small Wee Burn links, then near the Post Road in Noroton, were getting too crowded. The club bought of land in Darien and another 45 in Stamford, and an 18-hole course was opened July 1, 1918. The club was the sixth largest taxpayer, according to the October 1, 2004 town Grand List. The assessed value of the property (equal to 70 percent of actual estimated value) was $19.9 million.

Philanthropic groups in town

A Better Chance — for information on the Darien chapter, see Darien High School

Center for Hope is an organization set up in the early 1980s to provide bereavement and critical illness support for adults and children living with an illness, grieving a loss or coping with a trauma. "All counseling, support and education services are facilitated by specially-trained professionals in an atmosphere of hope and renewal", according to the organization. Founded in the early 1980s, the Center For Hope merged with Family Centers Inc. in 2005.

Children's Council of Darien is a group set up to provide information and advocacy for the town's children from birth through fifth grade. It describes itself as a nonpartisan group of "parents, educators, doctors and local agency members working together in a non-profit organization to better inform the community about children's needs."

CTE is a nonprofit organization founded in 1967 with a mission of countering "the basic causes of poverty in the Greater Stamford Area", according to the group's Web site. The organization is the federal and state designated Community Action Agency for Stamford, Greenwich and Darien.

Darien Book Aid Plan is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that distributes free books in response to specific requests from Peace Corps volunteers, libraries and schools worldwide. Books are also donated within the United States to libraries, prisons, and hospitals, along with Native American and Appalachian groups.

Darien Community Association is a nonprofit group founded more than 83 years ago which provides educational, cultural, recreational and civic programs; raises funds for scholarships and other community philanthropic works (partly through its Darien Thrift Shop); and maintains the Meadowlands mansion as a community resource.

Darien/Stamford Chapter of the American Red Cross was formed on January 1, 2007 by the merger of the Darien and Stamford chapters of the American Red Cross. The merger created an organization with an annual budget of about $850,000, a staff of six full-time employees and about 600 volunteers.

Darien Technology & Community Foundation

Person-to-Person run by St. Luke's Church in Darien, provides help for poor people to get through emergencies and become self sufficient. The organization's three main activities are:

An emergency assistance program (in which many different needs are provided for, including medical assistance, education in practical skills, help in finding housing and assistance through a food pantry and clothing center)
Campership program (in which it pays the entire cost for 600 elementary- and middle-school children from low-income families to go to local established day camps)
Scholarship program (in which tuition and books are provided to more than 140 students)

Notable people, past and present

For more information, see List of people from Darien, Connecticut Several people notable for their esteemed place in American history have called Darien home: Charles Lindbergh the late aviator, and his wife, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh lived on Tokeneke Trail. Steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie vacationed for several summers at what became the Convent of the Sacred Heart (divided into many private estates in the 1970s) at Long Neck Point.

Fernando and the Lobsters(2006)

In Bloom (2006)

The Stepford Wives (2004)

American Dream (2002)

Cannonball Run II (1984)

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Revolutionary Road (2007) Unless otherwise noted, information on this list is frm the Internet Movie DataBase Web site.
Landmarks

The Convent of St. Birgitta, which houses a Swedish order of nuns, has a large waterfront plot with a panoramic view of Scott's Cove. The convent offers room and board to guests or small groups looking for a spiritual retreat. "There is a formal layering, ggiving a sense of progression, as one moves across the site from the entrance road down to the shore, and the 'line of progression' determines the major site axis," Meier has written. "Perpendicular to this axis, the intersecting planes in the house respond to the rhythms of the slope, trees, rock outcroppings, and the shoreline."
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 19,607 people, 6,592 households, and 5,385 families residing in the town. A July 1, 2002 Census estimate put the town's population at 19,887. The population density was 1,525.2 people per square mile (588.7/km²). There were 6,792 housing units at an average density of 203.9 persons/km² (528.3 persons/sq mi). The racial makeup of the town was 87.97% White, 0.45% African American, 0.04% Native American, 1.42% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 0.80% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.19% of the population. Author James W. Loewen identified Darien as meeting his modern day definition of a de facto sundown town in his book .
   There were 6,592 households out of which 46.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 74.5% were married couples living together, 5.6% had a woman whose husband didn't live with her, and 18.3% were non-families. 15.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.95 and the average family size was 3.31.
   In the town the population was spread out with 32.5% under the age of 18, 3.0% from 18 to 24, 28.2% from 25 to 44, 24.0% from 45 to 64, and 12.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 96.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.7 males.
   The median income for a household in the town was $146,755, and the median income for a family was $173,777. Males had a median income of $100,000 versus $59,313 for females. The per capita income for the town was $77,519. 2.0% of the population and 0.6% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 1.6% are under the age of 18 and 2.6% are 65 or older.
Other Dariens in the United States
The City of Darien, Illinois was named after this Connecticut town when it was incorporated in 1969. When the incorporation committee reached an impasse on an acceptable name for the new city, Acting Mayor Sam Kelly suggested "Darien". Kelly had visited Darien, Connecticut, and found it to be a very pleasant and attractive community.
   Other communities with the same name: Darien, Georgia; Darien, New York; Village of Darien, Wisconsin; and Town of Darien, Wisconsin.

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