Avid “06880” reader Fred Cantor spent many years in Westport. He lives now in Stratford — just up the Merritt Parkway from here.
Today, Fred offers this ode to the historic road:
Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us of the distinctiveness and beauty of something we might otherwise take for granted.
That happened some years back. A friend traveled on the Merritt — I think for the first time — and said it was one of the most beautiful roadways she had ever driven on.
This woman grew up on the shores of Lake Superior, went to college in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and has spent nearly her entire adult life in southern California, so she has been on her share of majestic roads.
That beauty of the Merritt was reinforced for me recently by the cascading leaves on a windy day from vibrant fall foliage on a trip, when I traveled the entire length of the Parkway to visit my mom. It felt almost as if I were in a scene from an MGM movie in Hollywood’s Golden Age.
I first heard about the Merritt Parkway well before I ever saw it. Friends of ours in Fresh Meadows, Queens used to go for what they called “a drive in the country” on the Merritt in the early 1960s. They would end up having a meal at a place that sounded idyllic: the Red Barn.
It would have been impossible to know back then that not too far down the road (no pun intended), the driveway entrance to our future home on Easton Road would be the distance from the Merritt Parkway bridge of a Y.A. Tittle to Del Shofner pass (and that I would go back and forth through that underpass countless times).
Merritt Parkway bridge. (Photo/David McKenzie)
The bridges that pass over the Merritt are visual attractions in their own right. Their fascinating back stories (along with other interesting history) can be found here.
Today, sculptures like this one atop the James Farm Road Bridge near our home in Stratford catch our eye:
(Photo/Fred Cantor)
Of course, that “drive in the country” is not quite the same today with the increased traffic. But if you go on an off-hour, I still highly recommend driving on the Merritt, as opposed to I-95.
(Click here for a 2009 “06880” story honoring the Merritt Parkway.)
(All roads lead to “06880” — it’s “where Westport meets the world.” We hope all readers are driven to support our work. Please click here. Thank you!)
Thank you Fred! I’m a relative newbie to the area and I’ve always felt the locals take the Merritt for granted. I hope they realize what a beautiful road it is and how lucky they are (and I’ve lived in Europe and SE Asia!).
I also live in Stratford, on the Housatonic River, and I actually saved the article you wrote about Stratford a while back, that talked about all the places to visit here.
If you believe the Merritt Parkway has earned a spot in great roadways then you have to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway.
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when I was a grade school kid living in Washington Heights we used to go to a “Bungalow Colony in Danbury on the shores of Lake Kenosha. The drive up the Merritt was always an adventure. My brother and I would pull on imaginary ropes to pull the 1942 Packard up the steep hills of the Parkway. Then we would glide down the other side. Haven’t thought about that in a long time. Thanks John, for reminding me.
The Merritt is essentially a continuation of the Hutchinson Pkwy, which was named after an incredible woman who lived four centuries ago, Anne Hutchinson. https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/hutchinson-river-parkway/history#:~:text=This%20text%20is%20part%20of,for%20generations%20after%20her%20death.
Hutchinson was a proponent of the separation of church and state, and of religious freedom. She co-founded Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island before moving to Bronx NY, where she died. https://www.axios.com/2020/09/09/bob-woodward-book-trump-putin-russia-dan-coats
Put on trial for her beliefs in the Boston colony, she was so much smarter than her male accusers who she bested in her knowledge about religious texts, that the Boston leadership determined that they needed to establish a school to better educate male ministers, so founded Harvard College. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/anne-hutchinson-html.
Hence she inspired not just the name Hutchinson Pkwy, but also inspired the founding of Harvard College.
Query whether Hutchinson would have been a better name for the Merritt than Schuyler Merritt’s last name?
Nope. The Parkway is named after the river: it is the Hutchinson River Parkway. The River is named after the antinomian heretic.
LOL. BOTH the Hutchinson Pkwy and the Hutchinson River derive their names from Anne Hutchinson.
For you, she is a heretic.
For others, she was an articulate and early advocate of separation of church and religious freedom –two American grundnorms reflected in the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights. She was also the direct ancestor of numerous American presidents and of the revered legal scholar, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Your original post did not say the parkway’s name was “derived” from Anne Hutchinson. You said it was “named after” her. It was not. It was named after a river which was named after her. Those who named the parkway were perfectly capable of naming it the “Anne Hutchinson Parkway” if they wanted to. They chose not to. This must be interpreted consistent with the judicial principle that parties to a contract know that they are doing and are entitled to the fruits (or poisons) of their negotiation. For the avoidance of doubt, the Hudson River Parkway is not named after Henry Hudson either. If you are choosing to amend your statement, that is, of course, fine, even welcome.
You err in suggesting that I pass any moral judgment in naming Hutchinson a heretic. She was objectively a heretic: it is the best and simplest description of her. To suggest otherwise is to deny recognition of the full import of her belief and her work, and to fail to understand why and how she came to history’s attention in the first place. The first definition of heretic in the online version of the current Merriam-Webster dictionary is “a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma.” That precisely describes Anne Hutchinson. Religious sects determine by their own rules who is a believer, an apostate, a heretic, or an infidel. Hutchinson’s church judged her to be a heretic, therefore she was a heretic.
Heresy and cogency are, of course, not mutually exclusive. I never suggested Hutchinson was less than intelligent and articulate. We tend not to remember individual heretics unless they were articulate. Their ability to clearly articulate their heresy is what enables heretics to develop followings and become schismatics.
Thank you Dan Cantor, for calling attenion to the Merritt Parkway, and thank you Dan Woog for the link to your 2009 column about the screening of my documentary, “The Road Taken…The Merritt Parkway” at the Westport Library.
With the passage of time, I see my film now as a time capsule – with so much construction obstructing views – and sadly, many of the people I interviewed, no longer living. But the Parkway’s crumbling concrete bridges have been restored, the foliage cut back and the road is still there for our enjoyment (at faster speeds).
BTW – My film is now on youTube for anyone who wants to view it –
At the age of 10 we had to move from Duluth, Minnesota to somewhere around NYC when my father was transferred there working for Mobil Oil. My three siblings and I spent a traumatizing two months living with grandparents in West Virginia, as our parents giddily galavanted around NY, NJ and CT looking for an affordable home for the six of us. After searching house after house in the other states, they drove up The Merritt to check out Connecticut. Its unique bridges and gorgeous shade trees were such a relief from the turnpike! As they approached Fairfield County and exit 41, my dad recalled a comment he’d heard about Westport being a wonderful town. On a whim they took the exit to continue their search. The rest is my history.
The history of the Merritt has little to do with the “Hutch” ( a better name?). The Merritt Parkway was built entirely by Connecticut workers and paid with CT funds and deserves a Connecticut name. The other was a Robert Moses project with the WPA.
Moreover, there is no comparison with the unique bridges of the Merritt, designed by architect George Dunkelberger, and the road itself engineered brilliantly to reveal the topographic features of the Connecticut countryside. The Merritt is a work of art.
In 1941, my father was a graduate student at Columbia University, and he used to travel frequently on the Merritt Parkway.
He once mentioned to me that once there were silver reflectors on both sides of the roadway that helped illuminate the road ahead. Right after that attack on Pearl Harbor, he saw work crews along the parkway covering all those reflectors with tar, presumably to deny enemy aircraft an illuminated path to New York City.
Because we want to confuse visitors further, we change the Hutchinson to the Merritt and then again to the Wilbur Cross Parkway (not to be confused with the Wilbur Cross Highway.
It’s a good thing we don’t do that locally, say at places like Greens Farms Road and Bridge Street. Or Compo Road North and Clinton Avenue and Ford Road. Or Hillspoint Road and Compo Road South. Or Riverside Avenue and Wilton Road.
I grew up in Weston, graduating from Staples in 1953. With my first driver’s license and in my barely-running Packard convertible, I would explore the back roads of Weston. For us, the Merritt Parkway was a “drag” strip very late at night. My buddy, in his Oldsmobile, challenged me to a race. On our signal, we poured it on. He was ahead; I was ahead, and it looked like I would beat him . . . except that the wind got under my convertible top, and tore it free from the car. I wonder if the top is still back there, somewhere. /s/ John F. “Jack” Wandres
We used to travel the Merrit Parkway every Sunday to visit my grandparents in Stamford (today marks the 65 year of my grandmother’s passing. Because they didn’t want to disturb preexisting neighborhoods they built the parkway in the northerly, less populated part of the costal towns. Once I-95 was built we never traveled the Merrit again.
Robert Moses wanted to keep minorities from using these highways to enter the suburbs so he deliberately built the bridges too low for busses. That’s one reason why Westport relies on trains to New York while New Jersey commuters often use busses.
The parkways in Westchester were all named for rivers: Hutchison, Hudson and Saw Mill.
When the Connecticut Turnpike was built it caused all sorts of disruption and apparently lead to John Davis Lodge’s being defeated in his bid for reelection ss Governor, so I guess there s some justice in the road being named for him.
And Wilbur Cross taught for a year at Staples.
Thanks, John. Great lesson. But I wonder why there are no commuter buses to New York on I-95?
And Wilbur Cross not only taught at the original Staples High School in the mid-1880s: He was the second principal — at the age of 22. (Granted, there were just 6 teachers at the time; principal meant “principal teacher.”)
Fifty years later — after a long and distinguished career as a Yale University professor — he was elected Governor of Connecticut.
I think commuting to New York by train is entrenched and I don’t forsee the government subsidizing bus service the way New Jersey does. Would any of your Westport readers prefer a bus to the train?
When the NewHaven RR ran things, there was four abreast seating on most of the Westport trains, with the cars built in 1948–the New Haven’s last coach purchases–had all seats reclining. You would think when the state took over things would not regress–how did they manage not only to instate 5-abreast seating, but have half the seats face backwards? Not even the Penn Central thought up that one. Is it really too much to ask of conductors to return the seats around?
Thank you Fred for this great post “This Parkway Earns Merit” and lovely pictures to remind us. Indeed it does deserve merit and the merit was hard won by historians and a concerned group of people led by Catherine “Tappy” Lynn, wife of the late Vince Scully -the renowned Yale University Art History Professor.
Tappy fought tirelessly to establish the historic importance of the Merritt Parkway, earning it a place on the National Register of Historic Places. This meant the Parkway was to be maintained as originally designed. The State Department of Transportation wanted to add more lanes, and Jersey barriers instead of the wood and steel cable median and shoulder barriers. The DOT now must be congratulated for expertly repairing the elegantly proportioned bridges and overpasses, installing appropriate wood and steel cable barriers, safer on and off ramps, maintaining the grassy sloping banks planting them with attractive flowering trees and replacing dying median trees with new.
I just love driving on the Merritt and experiencing this wonderfully inspiring work of art, its beautifully elliptical curving arches and creative sculptures, always thanking those who made it happen in the first place and those who fought for its preservation.