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Litchfield CT |
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Connecticut's answer to the pretty Massachusetts towns in the Berkshires is Litchfield, which a National Park Service writer has called "probably New England's finest surviving example of a typical late 18th-century town." |
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Litchfield was incorporated in 1719, and in the next 100 years it grew and prospered as a center for small industry and an important way station on the Hartford-Albany stagecoach route. With this prosperity came the wherewithal, and the urge, to build very fine, graceful houses, which is what the citizens did, making sure that the houses were set well back from the roadway. Progress in the 19th century robbed Litchfield of much of its wealth—water-powered industry drove Litchfield's small-time craftsmen out of business, and the railroads bypassed the town—but the town's decline may have been a blessing in disguise. Today Litchfield retains its late 18th-century beauty, unsullied by the workers' tenements and textile mills that have changed the face of so many other New England towns. Here's what to see and do. |
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Tapping Reeve House and Law School—the first law school in America—in Litchfield CT.
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