Twentieth Century
In 1902, Anson Phelps Stokes, a New York merchant, banker and philanthropist, bought the southern tip of Long Neck and built "Brick House" where he and his family lived for "many years," according to Henry Case and Simon Cooper. "During Stokes's ownership of Brick House, Andrew Carnegie occupied it several summers," they wrote.
In 1916, Carnegie's wife, Louise, wrote a friend:
- We leave in 10 days for Brick House, Noroton, Connecticut right on Long Island Sound where the yacht will be within hailing distance all the time and I expect we shall be on the water as much as on land this summer.
The property was later occupied by the Convent of the Sacred Heart which once ran an elite girl's school there. Sisters of President John F. Kennedy were educated there, including Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Kathleen Kennedy. On September 5, 1929, the town's theater opened with a seating capacity of 700. It attracted moviegoers from surrounding towns as well, and community events were sometimes held there.
St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church was established on September 16, 1966. Originally the home of St. John's Parochial School, the property which became the new parish originally included the school, a rectory and a convent. A fund-raising campaign to construct a church building began in 1971, and the building was dedicated on October 27, 1973.
In 1970, Post 53, a scout Explorer post and the town's ambulance service, began operation.
Read more about this topic: History Of Darien, Connecticut
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)
“Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)