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ominated by the spire of the white clapboard Congregational meetinghouse built in 1839 and the 1888 stone clock tower of the Superior Court, the Litchfield Green and its bordering storefronts create the quintessential picture of small-town Connecticut life. The Litchfield Green is one of the state's most distinctive and recognizable symbols of rural beauty.

  This long, broad park punctuated with war monuments and shaded by maple, oak, and ash trees, many of which were planted as memorials, stretches in three contiguous sections (East, Center, and West parks) through the middle of the village.

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West Street, Litchfield, postcard, 1907. Courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut. This view shows buildings erected after fires that occurred in1886 and 1888.

  The Litchfield Green dates from the town's founding in 1719 as a frontier farming community on a tract purchased from the Tunxis Indians. The common itself originated as land set aside for the main road and for the first Congregational meetinghouse, which was built in 1723 at the main crossroads on approximately the site of the Beecher Memorial in the East Park. The meetinghouse was followed by a schoolhouse in 1732, and a county courthouse in 1751, when the town became the seat of Litchfield County.


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View of the Great Centennial Celebration at Litchfield, Conn., lithograph drawn by C. Busch, lithographed by Ch. Gildemeister, and printed by Nagel & Weingartner, New York, 1851. Courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut.    >>Get More Info

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View of West Street Before the 1886 Fire, black-and-white photograph by Spencer's Photograph Gallery, circa 1875. Courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut.

 

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