The Hat City of western Connecticut, a Revolutionary supply depot burned by the British in 1777 that came back to make more hats than anywhere else in the country, along the Still River below Candlewood Lake.

Fairfield County · Record checked October 8, 2026

86,518Population2020 census1
1687Named Danburythe settlers first called it Swampfield1
5 millionHats a yearfrom thirty factories in 18871
63,202Fair crowdat the Danbury Fair in 1902, up from 7,798 in 18712
12National Registerplaces, all still standing3

Then and now

The same town 142 years apart. Click either map to look closer.

Bird's-eye view map of Danbury, Connecticut from 1884 by Lucien Burleigh, restored by KNOWOL

1884

The bird's-eye view

By Lucien Burleigh

Danbury drawn as if from the sky, with its street names and landmarks, from the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad depot, the New England Hotel and the Danbury Opera House to the Beckerle and Meeker hat factories, Jones' and Robinson's fur factories and Starr's box factory.4

See the 1884 printMore about this map
Map of Danbury, Connecticut in 2026, with downtown and Main Street, Tarrywile Park, Lake Kenosia and 34 numbered landmarks

2026

Danbury today

By KNOWOL

Shaded hills from downtown out to Hawthorne Terrace, every street down to White Turkey Road Extension, Main Street, Tarrywile Park and Lake Kenosia, and a guide of 34 numbered landmarks with the National Register sites marked.5

See the 2026 printMore about this map

The story of Danbury

The night the British came

On the afternoon of April 26, 1777, the British column reached the south end of Main Street. Silas Hamilton, a farmer from the north part of town, had just picked up a bolt of wool cloth from the clothier and tied it behind his saddle. Three troopers chased him, but each time they got close, the loose end of the cloth flapped in the wind and spooked the nearest horse, and he got away. Four men fired on the troops from Major Daniel Starr's house and were shot down, and the house was burned. The pork and flour stores were rolled into the street and set on fire, and afterward the pork fat lay deep in the road. The town records burned too, left behind in the town clerk's house.67

Fifty-six hat shops

Zadoc Benedict's little red shop at the north edge of the village made three hats a day in 1780. By 1810 there were fifty-six hat shops in the township, none with more than five hands. Men stood around a kettle in small plank rooms heated by wood fires, forming the coarse fur bodies by hand, and the rough hats went to New York to be finished. In 1823 Joel Taylor of Danbury invented the hatter's circular dye kettle and wheel, which came into use across America and Europe. By 1887, thirty factories were turning out 5 million hats a year, and Danbury had become the Hat City.891

The bullet in the grave

General David Wooster was shot near Ridgefield on April 27, 1777, chasing the British after they burned Danbury. He was carried back to Danbury, and the surgeon probed for the ball but never found it. Wooster died a few days later and was buried in the old burying ground, about twenty feet from the grave of Robert Sandeman. Seventy-seven years later, in 1854, the town set out to move him to a new monument, but nobody was sure where he lay. Diggers found a skull, then two bunches of matted wire that had been his epaulets, and finally a lump of clay with a large English bullet inside. The Masons, the state and the people of Danbury raised the monument together.101112

Through the years

25 moments from 1685 to today.

  1. 1685Eight families from Norwalk and Stamford buy land from the Pahquioque and settle along the Still River.1
  2. 1680sThe settlers raise a little church, forty feet by thirty, and every person in town sits together on its sills.13
  3. 1687The General Court names the town Danbury, after Danbury in Essex, England.1
  4. 1708With war on the frontier, the colony orders a garrison built at Danbury at the colony's charge.14
  5. 1771Robert Sandeman, the Scottish preacher whose followers worshipped in a small church set back from Main Street, dies at Danbury and is buried in the old burying ground.11
  6. 1777On April 26 and 27, British troops under William Tryon burn Danbury and the Continental Army's stores.1
  7. 1777The town records burn in the town clerk's house, and the Assembly orders every road and piece of land in Danbury surveyed again.615
  8. 1780Zadoc Benedict opens what's traditionally called Danbury's first hat shop, with three workers making 18 hats a week.1
  9. 1784Danbury becomes a half-shire town, sharing the county courts with Fairfield.5
  10. 1802Thomas Jefferson writes to the Danbury Baptist Association about a "separation of church and state."1
  11. 1810Danbury has fifty-six hat shops, none with more than five hands, sending rough hats to New York to be finished.8
  12. 1813Ezra Mallory opens a small hat shop at Great Plain, the start of E. A. Mallory and Sons.16
  13. 1823Joel Taylor of Danbury invents the hatter's circular dye kettle and wheel, soon used in America and Europe.9
  14. 1824Danbury's first bank opens in a room rented in Dr. Comstock's house.17
  15. 1852The Danbury and Norwalk Railroad opens, the first rail line in Danbury.1
  16. 1854General Wooster's remains are moved to his new monument, and the British bullet that killed him turns up in the grave.1012
  17. 1861Danbury votes to pay the wife of each volunteer three dollars a week and each child one dollar while he's away.18
  18. 1869The Kohanza Reservoir dam breaks, and the flood kills 11 people within 30 minutes.1
  19. 1870The Danbury News is founded, and its centennial issue on the 1777 burning is printed in blue ink.19
  20. 1884Lucien Burleigh draws his bird's-eye view of Danbury.4
  21. 1889The borough is reincorporated as the City of Danbury.1
  22. 190263,202 people come to the Danbury Fair, more than any six other Connecticut fairs together.2
  23. 1903The New Haven Railroad builds Union Station on White Street.20
  24. 1908The U.S. Supreme Court decides the Danbury Hatters' Case.1
  25. 1981The last Danbury Fair is held. The Danbury Fair Mall opens on the grounds in 1986.1

Places to see

The numbers match the landmark guide printed on the 2026 map.

  • 3Tarrywile ParkSoutheast of downtown. 722 acres with 21 miles of trails.Visit their website
  • 5Lake Kenosia ParkWest of downtown. A lakeside city park.
  • 6Hearthstone CastleTarrywile Park. Built of stone quarried on the site.
  • 15Main Street Historic DistrictDowntown. 132 buildings from the 1780s on.
  • 16Western Connecticut State UniversitySouth of Danbury Hospital. Began as a teachers' school in 1903.Visit their website
  • 19Danbury FairOld fairgrounds. Held from 1821 to 1981.
  • 29Danbury Railway MuseumWhite Street. The 1903 Union Station, restored.Visit their website
  • 31Wooster Mountain State ParkSouth Danbury. Named for General David Wooster.
  • 32Ball and Roller Bearing CompanyMaple Avenue. Where the centerless grinder was developed.
  • 33Danbury Museum and Historical SocietyMain Street. The Rider House and Dodd Hat Shop.Visit their website

On the National Register

All 12 places in Danbury on the National Register of Historic Places that still stand today, oldest first, and why each one matters.3

  • Charles Ives House

    Built 1780 · Listed 1976 · 7 Mountainville Avenue

    The birthplace of the composer Charles Ives, born here in 1874 when the house stood on Main Street. It was moved three times within Danbury to make way for banks and a school, and it's the only house left that's tied to his musical career. The historical society runs it.21

    Visit their website

  • John Rider House

    Built 1785 · Listed 1977 · 43 Main Street

    Built by John Rider, a carpenter and Revolutionary militia captain. In 1941 it was about to be torn down for a gas station, and saving it started historic preservation in Danbury. It's the oldest house in the city still on its first site, and the home of the Danbury Museum and Historical Society.22

    Visit their website

  • Main Street Historic District

    1780s to 1930s · Listed 1983 · Main, White, Elm, West, Keeler, Ives and Boughton Streets

    The oldest part of the city, once called Town Street, running three quarters of a mile from the Rider House to White Street. Some buildings have been lost since, but its 132 buildings still hold churches, government buildings and Italianate business blocks from the hat era. A marker shows where the first shot was fired at the British in 1777.23

  • Octagon House

    Built 1852 · Listed 1973 · 21 Spring Street

    Daniel Starr built it with one-foot-thick concrete walls, following Orson Squire Fowler's book on octagon houses. It's considered the best surviving octagon house in Connecticut, and it was listed to save it from urban renewal.24

  • Meeker's Hardware

    Built 1883 · Listed 1983 · 86-90 White Street

    Known as the Red Block, it opened as a hardware store in 1885 and stayed in the Meeker family until 2013. It was the only hardware store on the National Register, famous for its old interior and its wall sign for cheap fountain drinks near the train station.25

  • P. Robinson Fur Cutting Company

    1880s and 1890s · Listed 1982 · Oil Mill Road

    A tall brick factory on the banks of the Still River, built in stages over the last twenty years of the 1800s. It's the last surviving building of the fur cutting side of the hat industry, which prepared the fur that became felt.26

  • Ball and Roller Bearing Company

    Listed 1989 · 20-22 Maple Avenue

    Joseph Nutt opened a machine shop here for the hat industry in 1886. Lewis Heim, a former hat worker, bought it in 1904 and developed the centerless grinding machine here, which changed how machine parts were made. It now houses a church and social service agencies.27

  • Tarrywile

    Listed 1988 · Southern Boulevard and Mountain Road

    The Tarrywile Mansion, probably the finest Shingle Style house in the city, with its gatehouse, carriage house and greenhouse. Charles Darling Parks bought it in 1910, and it's now the heart of the 722-acre Tarrywile Park.2829

    Visit their website

  • Hearthstone

    Built 1895 to 1899 · Listed 1987 · 18 Brushy Hill Road

    A stone castle built as a honeymoon cottage for the photographer E. Starr Sanford, from granite quarried on the hill and hauled by a little railroad built just for the job. Its roof has fallen in, but the stone walls still stand in Tarrywile Park, and the city has stabilized them.2930

  • Locust Avenue School

    Listed 1985 · 26 Locust Avenue

    A brick Romanesque Revival school designed by Warren R. Briggs in 1896, where new teachers from the state normal school practiced on real classes. It's the last 19th-century school building left in Danbury and is still a school today.31

  • Union Station

    Built 1903 · Listed 1986 · 120 White Street

    Built by the New Haven Railroad after the three lines into Danbury merged, with 125 trains a day at its peak. Alfred Hitchcock filmed Strangers on a Train on its curved platform. After it closed in 1993, rail fans formed the Danbury Railway Museum and restored it.20

    Visit their website

  • New Haven Railroad Danbury Turntable

    Built about 1914 · Listed 2005 · 120 White Street

    The roundhouse and shops around it burned in the 1980s, leaving the only intact railroad turntable in Connecticut. It sits in the railway museum's yard, a few hundred yards east of the station.20

    Visit their website

In their words

“During the week of the fair, Danbury suddenly expands into a city twice its usual size.”

The Connecticut Magazine, 19032

“Norwalk expands the blaze; o'er Redding hills High flaming Danbury the welkin fills.”

Joel Barlow's poem on the towns burned in the Revolution, quoted in The Connecticut Wits, 192032

Nearby towns

Sources

  1. Danbury, Connecticut, Wikipedia
  2. The Connecticut Magazine (1903), Financial History of Danbury, on the fair, Internet Archive
  3. National Register of Historic Places listings in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Wikipedia
  4. Bird's-eye view of Danbury, 1884, restored by KNOWOL
  5. Map of Danbury, Connecticut in 2026, KNOWOL (USGS elevation, Census Bureau roads)
  6. A Historical Collection of the Part Sustained by Connecticut during the War of the Revolution (1842), Internet Archive
  7. 1708 Ridgefield, Connecticut 1908, Bi-centennial Celebration (1908), Internet Archive
  8. Connecticut as a Colony and as a State (1904), Internet Archive
  9. John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections (1837 edition), Internet Archive
  10. Genealogy of the Woosters in America (1885), Internet Archive
  11. John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections (1836), Internet Archive
  12. Chapter Sketches, Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution: Patron Saints (1901), Internet Archive
  13. The Ancient Historical Records of Norwalk, Connecticut (1847), Internet Archive
  14. History of Ancient Woodbury, Connecticut (1854), Internet Archive
  15. The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, 1776 to 1778 (1894), Internet Archive
  16. Connecticut as a Colony and as a State (1904), on Ezra Mallory, Internet Archive
  17. The Connecticut Magazine (1903), Financial History of Danbury, on the banks, Internet Archive
  18. The Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the War of 1861-65 (1868), Internet Archive
  19. The Historical, Statistical and Industrial Review of the State of Connecticut (1884), Internet Archive
  20. Danbury Railway Museum, Wikipedia
  21. Charles Ives House, Wikipedia
  22. John Rider House, Wikipedia
  23. Main Street Historic District (Danbury, Connecticut), Wikipedia
  24. Octagon House (Danbury, Connecticut), Wikipedia
  25. Meeker's Hardware, Wikipedia
  26. P. Robinson Fur Cutting Company, Wikipedia
  27. Ball and Roller Bearing Company, Wikipedia
  28. Tarrywile Park, Wikipedia
  29. Hearthstone Castle, Wikipedia
  30. Seeking the abandoned ruins of Hearthstone Castle (updated May 2024), Seconds to Go
  31. Joseph W. Pepin Memorial Building (Locust Avenue School), Wikipedia
  32. The Connecticut Wits and Other Essays (1920), Internet Archive