The Norwalk Green Historic District is located in the center of the City of Norwalk between the Merritt Parkway and Route 95, and just south of the old Boston Post Road (Route 1). The Green is an elongated triangular grassed area, approximately 750 feet in length, containing mature trees and diagonal walking paths, a typical configuration of greens of the Victorian period. Prior to 1851 the Green was common land; livestock grazed or were impounded there. After being planted in the late nineteenth century, it was fenced to keep animals out. The bandstand near the north end of the Green is a bicentennialreplacement for an earlier structure (1901), and a World War I memorial is located near the south end. The memorial, a granite block with the names of the war dead on bronze plates, formerly supported a period cannon. Although houses of moderate size face the Green from the east and west as they did in the nineteenth century, the district today is zoned for restricted commercial use. [NR]

Architecture:The Norwalk Green Historic District, a significant collection of well-preserved nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century residential and institutional architecture which reflects the development of the city between 1760 and 1930. With a Victorian green as its focus, the Norwalk Green Historic District conveys a distinct sense of time and place. Its nineteenth-century character is enhanced by two of its most prominent institutional buildings, the Congregational and Protestant Episcopal churches . Although these two quite dissimilar buildings, one of wood, the other of stone, date from the twentieth century, they are revivals of the two major ecclesiastical styles of the period. St. Paul's is a very well-constructed Late Gothic church which displays exceptional stonework and an ornate belfry tower. Despite its cohesive collection of generally well-preserved buildings, the Norwalk Green Historic District is a district in transition. Once the center of a wider residential neighborhood, the district is slowly being eroded by encroachment of modern commercial construction and the conversion of existing historic residences to business use. [NR]

[1] District information retrieved from the town website http://www.norwalkct.org/.
[2] Norwalk Green Historic District, Report of the Historic District Study Committee, 1980, SHPO Library, Hartford.
[3] Assessors information and Parcel IDs retrieved from the historic district map attached with the Report of the Historic District Study Committee, 1980, SHPO Library, Hartford.
[NR] Cunningham Jan, Norwalk Green Historic District, National Register Nomination Number- 87002122 NRIS, National Park Service, 1987 - http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/87002122.pdf; http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/87002122.pdf.

The local and the National Register historic districts are similar in extent but not coterminous.