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:
“If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“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)