Norwalk Preservation Trust’s 2013 Living History tour was the opening event for a series of happenings celebrating the 100th anniversary of the consolidation of Norwalk in 1913. NPT is very lucky that photographer Dana Laird attended the tour. The photos presented here are drawn from her archive, with her permission and our immense gratitude.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, trolleys tied together the towns that eventually became the city of Norwalk. Children rode them to school. Shoppers took them to go downtown, uptown and even to other towns. Workers in the cigar factories and hat factories and corset factories rode them home very evening. On summer weekends, families got on open trolleys with their picnic baskets to enjoy a summer day at Roton Point.

The tour retraced the path of some of Norwalk’s trolley routes, stopping at historic points along the way, including the Trolley Barn on Wall Street and Roton Point, as well as Farm Creek in Rowayton, the former Beth Israel Synagogue, and East Norwalk Historical Cemetery [cemetery guide (PDF)]. The tracks are long gone, so the tour used buses that replicate the interiors of trolleys from the early 1900s to reproduce the experience. Actors in period costumes joined the tour at various points to bring history to life. Former City Historian Ralph Bloom and NPT president, architectural historian Tod Bryant, provided insight into “Lost Norwalk” while discussing historic buildings that once stood along the route. Old photos of some of these lost pieces of history were included in the tour program (PDF).