Norwalk, Connecticut Totally Explained

Everything about Norwalk Connecticut totally explained

Norwalk is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 84,437 making it the sixth largest city in Connecticut, and the third largest in Fairfield County. There were 32,711 households out of which 28.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.9% were married couples living together, 12.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.9% were non-families. 28.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.10.
In the city the population was spread out with 22.1% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 35.5% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 12.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 95.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.4 males.
According to a 2006 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $64,895, and the median income for a family was $80,732.(External Link

) Males had a median income of $46,988 versus $38,312 for females. The per capita income for the city was $31,781. About 5.0% of families and 7.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.6% of those under age 18 and 6.3% of those age 65 or over.

Recent population trends

1980 - 77,767
1990 - 78,331
2000 - 82,951
2007 - 90,431 (estimate)

Politics

Norwalk is politically divided, leaning slightly Democratic. In October 2005 active registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 1.3 to 1.

Voter Registration and Party Enrollment as of October 25, 2005
Party		Active Voters	Inactive Voters	Total Voters	Percentage	Democratic	13,626	109	13,735	29.71%	Republican	10,029	84	10,113	21.87%	Unaffiliated	21,447	188	21,635	46.79%	Minor Parties	745	5	753	1.63%
Total		45,850	386	46,236	100%

Education

The current Superintendent (education) of Norwalk Public Schools is Dr. Sal Corda.
   The public school system has three high schools, each covering Grades 9 through 12: The oldest, Norwalk High School (founded in 1902) is the home of the Norwalk Bears. Brien McMahon High School (founded in 1960) is named for U.S. Senator Brien McMahon. The third is Briggs High School, which was named for Dr. Richard C. Briggs, who was superintendent of schools from 1971 to 1980. Briggs High School was formerly known as the Briggs Center for Vocational Arts and is an alternative to the two traditional high schools.
   The city has four middle schools, for grades 6-8: West Rocks Middle School and Nathan Hale Middle School, which feed into Norwalk High School, as well as Roton Middle School and Ponus Ridge Middle School, which feed into Brien McMahon High School.
   There are twelve elementary schools in Norwalk: Brookside, Columbus Magnet, Cranbury, Fox Run, Jefferson, Kendall, Marvin, Naramake, Rowayton, Silvermine, Tracey, and Wolfpit. One charter school, Side by Side Community School, is located in South Norwalk.
   In 2006, three of the city's four middle schools and nine of its 12 elementary schools, along with a "community school" were cited as falling behind in standards for the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act. Three elementary schools hadn't met the standards for two years in a row, so students in those schools are offered the choice to go to a Norwalk public school that hasn't been designated as needing improvement.
   Aside from public schools, there's also the private All Saints Catholic School, which offers preschool through 8th grade education.

Post-secondary education

Norwalk Community College

Gibbs College, Norwalk campus

University of Phoenix

Annual events

Norwalk Harbor Splash!

, held in early June and started in 1995, the festival features arts and crafts booths, food vendors, music, a parade, and dragon boat races.

St. George Greek Orthodox Festival, held in early June, the festival features Greek delicacies, Pontic Greek dance exhibitions and a large carnival.

Round Hill Highland Games

, a festival of Scottish culture and athletic events, was started in 1923 in Greenwich, CT but interrupted during World War II, then restarted in 1952, and has been held in Norwalk's Cranbury Park on or around July 4 for a number of years. In 2006, the 83rd annual event attracted 4,000 people to hear bagpipes and watch the caber toss, the hammer throw, and other events; with athletes often wearing wool kilts. Games for children are also offered. Food and Scottish items are offered for sale. Organizers say the event is the third-oldest Scottish games festival in the United States.

SoNo Arts Celebration

, held in mid-summer

Kayak for a Cause, a fund-raising event held every summer since 2000 at Veterans Park (until 2006 the event was held at Calf Pasture Beach).

The Norwalk Oyster Festival, held first weekend after Labor Day

Norwalk Boat Show

, held in late September

The Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum has hosted an annual antique show since 1978. In 2006 the show was held the last weekend in October and attracted dealers from Ohio and Pennsylvania as well as Connecticut.

Large and distinctive companies

ABB Inc. Asea Brown Boveri (ABB)

-- A technology-based provider of power and automation products, systems, solutions, and services.

Arch Chemicals Inc. (ARJ)

-- headquarters, 501 Merritt Seven; international manufacturer of specialty chemicals for markets including personal care products, wood preservatives and coatings, water purification and building products. Its hydrazine propellants are used in NASA's space shuttle, government and commercial satellites and launch rockets; 2,725 employees companywide; 210 in Connecticut; $1.3 billion in 2005 revenues; CEO Michael E. Campbell

Affinion Group, Inc. (External Link

) -- Global headquarters, 100 Connecticut Avenue; a large marketing company specializing in membership services, loyalty programs, direct marketed insurance and value-added chacking programs in North America, Europe, and South Africa

Applera Corp. Applied Biosystems Group (ABI)

-- headquarters, 301 Merritt Seven; the successor to Norwalk's old Perkin Elmer Corp. (the actual name of Perkin Elmer went to another company) Appelera Biosystems develops, manufactures, sells and services instrument systems, reagents and software for the life sciences industry. It is a separately traded stock under the holding company Applera Corp., also based in Norwalk. (Applera Corp. also includes Celera Genomics, best known for its work on the human genome project.) Appelera Biosystems has 4,030 employees companywide; $1.8 billion in 2005 revenues; CEO Tony L. White

Bear Naked -- cereal and snackfood manufacturer.

Diageo North America -- U.S. headquarters of the world's largest liquor maker

Dooney & Bourke apparel manufacturer

Emcor Group Inc. (EME)

-- headquarters, 301 Merritt Seven (not to be confused with "Premcor Inc." of Greenwich); a Fortune 500 company that performs mechanical and electrical construction, energy infrastructure and facilities services for a range of businesses worldwide; 26,000 employees companywide; 506 in Connecticut; $4.7 billion in 2005 revenues; CEO Frank T. MacInnis

FactSet Research Systems - A leading provider of global financial and economic information, including fundamental financial data on tens of thousands of companies worldwide. Combining hundreds of databases into its own dedicated online service, FactSet also provides the tools to download, combine, and manipulate financial data for investment analysis. FactSet has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, its headquarters are in Norwalk.

IMS Health — The world's largest supplier of pharmaceutical market intelligence recently moved its headquarters to Norwalk from Fairfield, Connecticut.

Kayak.com -- headquarters, Connecticut Avenue; a travel search engine Web site founded in January 2005; Steve Hafner, CEO.

King Industries - a chemical manufacturer whose headquarters are on Science Drive in Norwalk.

Knipschildt Chocolatier - a leading gourmet chocolate maker.

Media Storm LLC (privately held)

-- headquarters, 32 Haviland St., South Norwalk; helps entertainment marketers identify advertising vehicles, and then helps place the ads. The company helped promote the debut of the FX television program The Shield, which broke the record for the number of viewers for a cable television premier. In 2006 the company made Inc. magazine's "Inc. 500" list of fast-growing companies, coming in at No. 106, with 869.7% growth over three years (2002 to 2005). Media Storm had $72.5 million in annual revenues in 2005 and 22 employees. It was founded in November 2001 by managing partners Tim Williams and Craig Woerz, who formerly worked together at AOL Time Warner.

Northrop Grumman Norden Systems (formerly Norden Systems

) -- a division of Northrop Grumman.

Pepperidge Farm -- a division of the Campbell Soup Company since 1961.

priceline.com (PCLN)

-- headquarters; online service books airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises, vacation packages and mortgages; 532 employees companywide, 280 in Connecticut; $963 million in annual revenues; CEO Jeffrey H. Boyd

R.T. Vanderbilt Company, 30 Winfield Street; chemical supplier.

Gus Sclafani Foods -- an importer of European foods that was started 1911 in Stamford, relocated to Norwalk, and is now operated by is operated by A and J Foods of Arden, North Carolina.

SoBe -- a division; founded in Norwalk in 1996, it was bought by PepsiCo in 2000.

Stew Leonard's -- headquarters and flagship store on Westport Avenue

Virgin Atlantic Airways -- U.S. headquarters at 75 North Water Street

The influential Financial Accounting Standards Board and related Government Accounting Standards Board are headquartered in Norwalk.

Xerox -- World headquarters located at 45 Glover Avenue; global document management company, which manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.

Landmarks, sites and attractions

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum (Website

) — 295 West Ave. — 62-room mansion considered one of the oldest and finest surviving Second Empire style country houses ever built in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971. Recently, it was used for interior shots in the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives.

Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, a major aquarium that specializes in displaying the marine life and ecology of Long Island Sound.

The Mill Hill Historic Park and Museum, a collection of historic buildings open to visitors and maintained by the Norwalk Historical Society only one day a week in the spring and summer months.

The Norwalk Islands are used by powerboaters, fishers, kayakers and canoeists as well as birdwatchers and campers for day trips and sometimes overnight camping stays.

Norwalk Museum

, — 41 North Main St. — in the Colonial Revival -style building that previously served as the South Norwalk City Hall prior to the incorporation of Norwalk and Old Well (South Norwalk) in 1913.

Norwalk Youth Symphony performs at concerts held in the Norwalk City Hall on East Avenue.

Sheffield Island Lighthouse is open to the public seasonally.

SoNo Switchtower Museum

The Silvermine Tavern

, a for-profit restaurant in a historic complex of buildings in the Silvermine section of the city.

Stepping Stones Museum for Children at Mathews Park, near the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum. For children ages 10 and under.

Sites on the National Register of Historic Places

Norwalk sites and districts on the National Register of Historic Places include the Norwalk Green Historic District (roughly bounded by Smith and Park Streets, Boston Post Road, East and Morgan Avenues). The district contains examples of Federal Style, Greek Revival, and Late Victorian architecture. (added 1987)
Another local site on the Register is the Former Joseph Loth Company Building (25 Grand St.). The 133,000-square-foot building, since renovated as an apartment building and renamed "Clocktower Close" in the mid-1980s, has an 85-foot-high Romanesque Revival clocktower(added 1984) These other sites are also on the Register: the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion (added 1970), the former Rock Ledge estate in Rowayton (1977), the Norwalk Museum (1995), and three lighthouses -- the Sheffield Island Lighthouse, Peck Ledge Lighthouse and Greens Ledge Lighthouse.
For additional Norwalk sites on the list, see South Norwalk.

Media

Several publications regularly cover news in Norwalk, including two daily newspapers. The Hour

is an independent daily newspaper based in Norwalk and founded in 1871. The Advocate (Stamford), a Tribune Company publication, has a Norwalk edition, and the paper maintains a bureau on West Avenue. The Norwalk Citizen-News

, local weekly owned by the Brooks Community Newspapers chain, now a subsidiary of Media News Group, also covers the city, and Rowayton is also served by a sister publication, the The Darien News-Review

.
Rowayton is also covered by New Canaan-Darien & Rowayton magazine

, a glossy monthly is owned by Moffly Publications. Canaiden LLC, which publishes Stamford Plus

magazine in Stamford, started publishing Norwalk Plus

magazine in 2006. News 12 Connecticut, a 24-hour regional news channel covering events in southwestern Connecticut is based in Norwalk. News 12 Connecticut is owned and operated by Rainbow Media Holdings, Inc. Other broadcast media include three radio stations based in the city: WNLK-AM

1350 (1,000 watts) is owned by Cox Radio Inc.j and shares all its programming with Stamford-ranged WSTC-AM 1400. WFOX-FM

95.9; 3,000 watts; "The Fox", is a classic rock station. WCTZ-FM

96.7, "The Coast", is formerly the oldies station "Kool 96.7".

Elsolnews.com

, a community Spanish Language Weekly Newspaper covering news and events.

Transportation

Public transportation

Bus

Public transportation within Norwalk is provided primarily by the Norwalk Transit District's "WHEELS" buses. The WHEELS buses offer extensive service in Norwalk and Westport and the Norwalk Transit District operates services throughout southwestern Connecticut. The state run Connecticut Transit Coastal Link buses operate through Norwalk as part of the Stamford Division.

Rail

The Metro-North Railroad's main New Haven and Danbury branch lines both run through Norwalk. Metro-North provides passenger and commuter service to four stations within the city, with direct connections to New York City, Stamford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. The South Norwalk station lies along the main line and is also the southern terminus of the Danbury branch line. The Rowayton and East Norwalk stations are along the New Haven main line. The Merritt 7 station lies along the Danbury branch line. The New Haven line bridge over the Norwalk River is the only four track swing bridge in the nation. The main line comprises a segment along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor though the national passenger railroad doesn't provide service to Norwalk. The nearest stations that Amtrak does stop at are Stamford and Bridgeport. The Connecticut Department of Transportation's Shore Line East passenger service trains also run through Norwalk, though only a few SLE trains stop at South Norwalk station. Shore Line East trains also stop at nearby Stamford and Bridgeport stations.
Freight service over the rail lines in Norwalk is provided by CSX Transportation, the Housatonic Railroad, and the Providence and Worcester Railroad. During the week, over 200 trains a day pass through Norwalk.

Air

There is no scheduled air service directly into Norwalk, but there are airports nearby such as LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City; Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey; Westchester County Airport in Westchester County; Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, New York; and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks (near Hartford) Connecticut. Nearby general aviation airports include Danbury Municipal Airport in Danbury and Tweed New Haven Regional Airport in New Haven.

Roads and highways

Interstate 95 crosses through Norwalk, and there are several exits within the Norwalk city limits. The Merritt Parkway also crosses through Norwalk. Both of these roads are designated to be north/south routes, but through Norwalk, both of them primarily travel east/west. The major north-south artery is Route 7, which begins at Interstate 95. There is an exit to the Merritt Parkway, but only southbound towards New York City, as environmental activists have successfully blocked a full interchange between the two arteries. In northern Norwalk, Route 7 changes from a limited access, divided highway to an ordinary surface road. Originally, the intent was to build the "Super 7" highway (in a different place than the current Route 7), which would link Interstate 95 with Interstate 84 in Danbury, but environmental groups and slow-growth advocates succeeded in preventing this highway from being built (although the state of Connecticut continues to own the land to build the highway).
The Route 123 bridge over the Norwalk River, which was undergoing repairs as of August 2007, was one of 12 bridges in the southwestern part of the state (including New Haven) with safety inspection ratings so low they're considered to be in critical condition. The ratings for these bridges were worse than the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed during rush hour on August 1, 2007.

Notable people, past and present

See also List of people from Norwalk, Connecticut Notable residents and others connected to Norwalk include Andy Rooney, commentator on 60 Minutes, who lives in Rowayton, as does author Philip Caputo. A. Scott Berg, an award-winning biographer of Katharine Hepburn, and Charles Lindbergh among others, was born in Norwalk, as was Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Johnny Gruelle, artist and author, creator of Raggedy Ann, lived in town before he moved to Wilton. Historian Stephen W. Sears lives in Norwalk. Frances Dee (1909-2004), an actress, died in the city, as did actress Eileen Heckart. Big Band composer Arthur (Artie) Shaw lived in Norwalk in the 1950s. Bruce Weitz, an actor best known for playing Sgt. Michael "Mick" Belker on the 1980s television program Hill Street Blues, was born in Norwalk. Actor Treat Williams is from Rowayton. Jazz-piano great Horace Silver was also born in Norwalk.
Multi-Grammy award winner Vince Mendoza was born and raised in Norwalk. Randy LaJoie, a NASCAR driver, is from Norwalk, as is Calvin Murphy, a former NBA basketball player (who is now in the NBA Hall of Fame), and baseball player Mo Vaughn. The late Bob Miller an NFL player with the Detroit Lions was born in the city. Two Medal of Honor recipients came from Norwalk: John D. Magrath in World War II and Daniel J. Shea in the Vietnam War.

Movies filmed in Norwalk

Full-length features and documentary movies, partially filmed or completely taking place in Norwalk, listed in reverse chronological order:

Birds of America (2008) starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Hillary Swank, and Matthew Perry

The Six Wives of Henry Lefay (2008) filmed in 2007 with Tim Allen

For One More Day (television movie, ABC, December 2007) — filmed in July 2007 on Broad Street. The film is produced by Oprah Winfrey and stars Michael Imperioli.

College Road Trip (2008) — scenes with Raven and Martin Lawrence were filmed in town in mid-July 2007; shooting locations were the former Norwalk police headquarters building in Matthews Park, on the Merritt Parkway and along the Route 7 connector.

The Life Before Her Eyes (2008), currently in production. Uma Thurman filmed a scene at Norwalk Community College in August, 2006.

Revolutionary Road (2008) — shot in Norwalk and Darien; starring Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Nightclub (2006)

Freezer Burn (2006)

Henry May Long (2006)

The Stepford Wives (2004)

Satan's Little Helper (2004)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

The Object of My Affection (1998)

The Stepford Wives (1975) - though the primary filming location was Westport.

House of Dark Shadows (1970) Source: Internet Movie DataBase Web site's page for Norwalk

Trivia

In J. D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden's parents are attending a party in Norwalk the night he sneaks into his apartment to visit his sister, Phoebe.

Norwalk was paired with Nagarote, Nicaragua as the result of a sister city consortium to pair six U.S. communities with six in Nicaragua for the purposes of fostering community development. The Norwalk-Nagarote Sister City Project

nonprofit organization located in Norwalk coordinates the efforts.

References

Further Information

Get more info on 'Norwalk Connecticut'.

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