In pre-colonial days, the Siwanoys, a subnation of the Wappinger tribe, lived on the land—which they called "Rippowam"—that now constitutes the site of modern Stamford. In 1640 the Siwanoys sold the land to Nathaniel Turner, an agent for the New Haven Colony, who was looking for arable land. A year later, twenty-eight families belonging to the Congregational Church fled a church dispute in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and arrived in Rippowam to form a permanent settlement. They called their town Stamford, after its English counterpart. In 1644, Stamford lost a third of its settlers when they moved to Long Island. Stamford, in turn, was absorbed into the Connecticut Colony.
Stamford, a minor port on Long Island Sound, had channels suitable only for small craft and barge traffic. The young community relied on subsistence agriculture and some crafts and only minimally on its trade with the West Indies. By the time of the Revolutionary War, Stamford, with 3,800 citizens, could boast that it was a major population center between New York City and New Haven.
Stamford continued to rely on its small industries until the founding of the Stamford Manufacturing Company in 1844. The new concern set up in the Cove Mills and began producing dyewood and licorice extracts, both crucial to the New England textile industry. In 1848, the railroad arrived, making Stamford one of the stops on the New York City-New Haven run. Soon European immigrants arrived by the trainload to work in Stamford's new mills. The Irish arrived in the 1840s, settling in the Kerrytown and Dublin sections of the city and forming Stamford's first ethnic minority.
Aside from the arrival of the railroad, 1848 was an important year for Stamford for another reason: Linus Yale invented the first cylinder lock, revolutionizing lock design and launching an American industry. From 1868 until 1959, the Yale and Towne Company was the single largest employer in Stamford. Between 1869 and 1892 alone, the payroll grew from 30 to 31,000 employees. In the meantime, the west end of the city near the Mill River saw the opening of mills and foundries. In the business section, new banks, utilities, and factories opened. The population in 1868 stood at 9,700 people; that year a second railroad line opened, this time connecting the city with New Canaan.
By 1893, Stamford's population had swollen to almost 16,000 people; by the end of the century, the count stood at 19,000, which included a large number of Polish immigrants. Business boomed, much of it based upon the inventions of another Stamford genius, Simon Ingersoll. Ingersoll masterminded the friction clutch, the spring scale, and a steam-driven wagon, the precursor of the modern automobile.
When New York City became the East Coast industrial mecca of the late nineteenth century, Stamford developed into a residential suburb of the larger city. Following World War II, Stamford became the site of a number of research and development concerns, which added greatly to the local economy. Stamford incorporated as a city late by East Coast standards: in 1949, the city absorbed the surrounding communities to become the city of Stamford. By the 1960s, Stamford had attracted so many corporate headquarters that more commuters were traveling into Stamford each day than were commuting to New York City jobs. Much of the city's success in attracting those companies rested on its appeal as a suburb. To make way for them, most of the downtown was demolished and replaced by a boulevard of fortress-like corporate headquarters and a mall. The recession of the early 1990s saw the end of the office boom; new buildings stood empty as new businesses sought space in office parks elsewhere. Stamford found itself with a surfeit of office buildings and no downtown to go with them. But by the end of 1997, the situation had reversed, and Stamford had experienced a "mini-boom" with the occurrence of more than three million square feet of new, expanded or renovated construction.
By the year 2000, Stamford had increased its rental apartments by 1,000 units, and was planning for 1,000 more. In addition, the city had experienced a 27 percent decrease in the crime rate over the preceding four years. In 2005, Mayor Dannel P. Malloy said of his city: "Stamford is a community which is economically soaring, with major economic development projects currently underway. The Stamford office market is vibrant, unemployment remains at all time lows, and our economy is well diversified. The City continues to be one of the premier business locations in the metropolitan New York market, and the residential sector in Stamford is growing with the addition of hundreds of downtown rental units. Stamford continues to be a people-oriented community with a vibrant and active arts and cultural presence."
Historical Information: Stamford Historical Society, 1508 High Ridge Road, Stamford, CT 06903-4107; telephone (203)329-1183