Central Norwalk

Norwalk Library, ca. 1905

This portion of Norwalk was the Borough of Norwalk from 1836 [2] until incorporation as the first City of Norwalk in 1893.[3] In 1913 the separate cities of Norwalk, South Norwalk, as well as the unincorporated portions of the Town of Norwalk consolidated to form the City of Norwalk that exists to this day. Central Norwalk is now the First taxing district of the City of Norwalk. Located within the neighborhood is the "Norwalk Green Historic District" which has been on the National register of Historic Places since 1987. The historic district is bound by Smith Street, Park Street, the Boston Post Road (Cross Street), East Avenue, and Morgan Avenue. It includes the Mill Hill Historic Park (that contains the 1835 Norwalk Town House) as well as the Norwalk Green bound by East Avenue, Park Street, and St. Paul's Place.[4]

The neighborhood has been the focus of several real estate redevelopment projects and proposals.

Central Norwalk's parks include the Norwalk Town Green, also known as Norwalk Green or simply the Green. A common area until 1851, the Green is now a park owned and maintained by Norwalk's First Taxing District.[7] It features a gazebo, which serves as a bandstand for outdoor concerts; and a historic cannon that was forged in 1881 at Bourges, France, fired at the Battle of Verdun in 1916, and afterward donated by the French government to Norwalk.[8] In 2018, Norwalk's Mulvoy-Tarlov-Aquino Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 603 donated $20,000 for perpetual care and maintenance of the cannon.[8] Surrounding the granite base beneath the cannon are plaques listing local veterans’ names.

Irving Freese Park, named for mayor Irving Freese, which was created at the intersection of Main and Wall Streets in the mid-1960s as part of reconstruction work following the flood of 1955.[9] On the west side of the park a fenced parapet overlooks the walled-in Norwalk River. Park benches shaded by trees also overlook the river. The park contains a monument to the Hungarian uprising of 1956, placed there by a Hungarian association in the city, and a plaque commemorating the embarkation of Nathan Hale from Norwalk Harbor in mid-September 1776 on his fatal spying mission.

"As Wall Street suffered from recent economic and structural deterioration, so did the park facility which also lacked a defined user group," according to a Norwalk city capital projects report. "A goal identified in the Wall Street Redevelopment Plan is the restoration of Wall Street as a traditional center for the Norwalk community which included the development of a downtown residential population. To achieve this goal the Plan outlined a strategy for revitalization of parks and open spaces along the Norwalk River, Freese Park specifically identified as one of these assets."[9]

In 2007 the Connecticut Light and Power Company utility helped finance $25,000 of the improvements to the park, including new lighting and landscaping, improved pathways, a new railing along the edge of the river and an irrigation system.[10]

Pine Island Cemetery

The Pine Island Cemetery, located behind Mathews Park (around the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum), dates to 1708 and has about 1,000 graves. The oldest identified grave belongs to Elizabeth Bartlet, wife of one of the city's founders, who died in 1723 at the age of 38. One burial in the cemetery was as late as 2000. As of the summer of 2007, the Norwalk Historical Commission, concerned that the West Avenue and Reed Putnam redevelopment projects might harm the cemetery, was attempting to get the cemetery listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a program run by the National Park Service. Widening nearby Crescent Street, for instance, would mean six graves would have to be moved. The cemetery had been the burial site of pillars of the community, with expensive, elegant gravestones, but by the mid-twentieth century it had become a gravesite for paupers.[11]

The city of Norwalk Fire Department currently operates 2 Fire Stations in close proximity to the Central or Midtown Norwalk area: Fire Station # 1 is located at 90 New Canaan Ave. in the Broad River/Main Avenue area, and Fire Station # 2, or Fire Headquarters is located at 121 Connecticut Ave.

Additionally, Norwalk's first volunteer fire companies, Phoenix Hose Co. 1 and Pioneer Hook & Ladder Co. 1 were quartered at 32 Commerce St. in the Wall Street neighborhood. Later, Hope Hose Co. 2 would move into the building, while the other two fire companies moved north to a new firehouse at 40 Main St.(Now extant).

• 
  Stepping Stones Museum for Children
• 
  Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, south side
• 
  At Main and Wall streets after the October 1955 storm There were three major storms in that affected Norwalk in 1955: Hurricane Connie, Hurricane Diane, and an unnamed storm in October.[12]
• 
  Center for Contemporary Printmaking
• 
  Examples of the many damaged gravestones at Pine Island Cemetery
• 
  Former police headquarters, Mathews Park
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  Norwalk Courthouse, Belden Avenue
• 
  Wall Street, about 1905
• 
  Union Park, about 1913

• Wall Street Historic District (Norwalk, Connecticut)

• Lockwood Mathews Mansion
• Stepping Stones Museum for Children
• Center for Contemporary Printmaking
• Norwalk YMCA

41.1184°N 73.4123°W / 41.1184; -73.4123 (Central Norwalk)