One of the oldest surviving wooden structures in New England, the Joshua Hempsted House at 11 Hempstead Street was built around 1678 and stayed in the same family for over two centuries. It stands as a direct physical link to the early settlement of Connecticut, with thick walls and small windows typical of 17th-century New England construction.
The house is managed as a historic house museum and gives visitors a clear sense of domestic life in the colonial period. The famous diary kept by Joshua Hempsted between 1711 and 1758 — one of the longest such records from colonial New England — is the primary document of what life was like on this block and in this town during that era. Open seasonally; check ahead for hours.