Postcards from the Past: The Post Road, Darien

The Post Road has served as Darien's main artery for more than two centuries now. The first rendition of the path was called the Connecticut Turnpike, and was the state's 44th toll road, according to The Story of Darien, Connecticut, by Kenneth Reiss.

The postcards pictured above were from the turn of the century; Postcard 1 has a postmark dated Aug. 8, 1911, and Postcard 2 was mailed in 1908. Back then, the road was still made of packed Earth. However in 1915, Darien was the first town in Connecticut to create the office of Superintendent of Highways, as "part of a definite plan for permanent surface highway in anticipation of motor-vehicle use," according to the Corbin Document.

The Post Road, which was Darien's longest road at 4.1 miles long, was paved in 1924; the concrete road was constructed in four separate sections between April and November of that year. By this time, approximately 1,000 motor-vehicles called Darien home.

The landscape along the road continues to change, even now. At the turn of the century, businesses lined the roads, including several stores, the Home Bank and Trust company, and a massive hotel. But many of these were lost when the Fire of 1918 swept through the street on Jan. 3, 1918.

The front page of the next day's Darien Review featured a banner line, which declared, "Out of the Ruins of the Great Conflagration Will Arise a Greater, Better Darien."

Businesses were rebuilt, and the Post Road remained the heart of the town, and an important stretch of road for passers through.

The town's population swelled in the years following the fire. According to Reiss's book, about 4,000 people lived in Darien in 1920; this number tripled to 12,000 residents by 1950.

"It was a much different place of course, a much different time," said Ed Chrostowski, a columnist for the Darien News, and former editor of the Darien Review. "There were more houses, I think, on the Post Road. Before [Interstate-95] was built, the Post Road was not a very desirable address, because it was heavy in truck traffic, and when they built [Interstate 95], the trucks got off the Post Road, and the Post Road became nice again."