Lime Rock is a village and

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

(listed as Lime Rock Historic District) in the

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

Salisbury Salisbury ( , ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers River Avon, Hampshire, Avon, River Nadder, Nadder and River Bourne, Wi ...

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

, United States, situated on the Salmon Kill. The village center and the historic district are substantially similar. The surrounding area is also generally referred to as Lime Rock.

History

Formerly known as "The Hollow", Lime Rock became a center of the iron industry with the establishment by Thomas Lamb of a forge in the village around 1734. As the iron industry expanded, Lime Rock later became the home of the Barnum and Richardson Company, which made it the capital of the historic iron industry of the upper

Housatonic Valley The Housatonic River ( ) is a river, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 in western Massachusetts and western Connecticut in the United ...

. U.S. Senator William Henry Barnum, the chief executive of Barnum and Richardson and longest serving Chairman of the

Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal executive leadership board of the United States's Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party. According to the party charter, it has "general responsibility for the affairs of the ...

, resided in Lime Rock, and was the founder of Trinity Episcopal Church Trinity Lime Rock. He, along with many other personages of the area's historic iron industry, is buried in the Lime Rock Cemetery. By 1923, Barnum and Richardson had closed its eastern works, which went bankrupt. Initially the village was largely abandoned,What's so special about Lime Rock?
, Between the Lakes Group website, accessed August 11, 2009 but by 1927 it had become the home of an artist colony, the Lime Rock Artists Association, which hosted major exhibits in the village in each of the nine years from 1927 through 1935. The original historic village is still largely intact. In 1946,

Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (; ; July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, ...

moved the

Institute of General Semantics The Institute of General Semantics (IGS) is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1938 by Alfred Korzybski, to support research and publication on the topic of general semantics. The Institute publishes Korzybski's writings, including the se ...

from Chicago to the former Richardson mansion in Lime Rock where he directed it until his death in 1950. The Institute remained in Lime Rock until 1981 when it moved elsewhere.History of the Institute
Institute of General Semantics website Today Lime Rock is best known as the location of the

automobile racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. In North America, the term is commonly used to describe all forms of automobile sport including non ...

course at

Lime Rock Park Lime Rock Park is a natural-terrain motorsport road racing venue located in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States, a hamlet in the town of Salisbury, Connecticut, Salisbury, in the state's northwest corner. Built in 1956, it is the nation's thi ...

References

{{authority control Historic districts in Litchfield County, Connecticut Queen Anne architecture in Connecticut Salisbury, Connecticut Villages in Connecticut Villages in Litchfield County, Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in Litchfield County, Connecticut

History

See also

References