Where you going with my goat, mister?
Now that Chase is set to open in Cos Cob, becoming the 20th (or so) banking institution in that blighted section of town, isn’t it time for a little sprucing up? How about a name change: “Little Switzerland”? I like it.
For What It's Worth 
My father has lots of money in our local Chase and they can never remember his name. I have very little money in First County bank on Mason or Milbank, and they always ay hello to me me by name, even though I’m often just running in for my coffee and free cookies. I actually love my bankers. I just can’t believe how long my dad has been banking at our local Chase and how he has a great deal more money in there than I have in my bank, and they have no clue who he is at all.
Blight? Blight!!! Hey, Riverside has a McDonalds and a strip mall. I arrest my case.
Cos Cobber, Riverside has the ugliest stretch of the Post Road in town. Horrific and it has always been so.
Cos Cob: Bank Playground on the Sound
Btw, I wonder if there is another zip code as small as Cos Cob (6800 people) with as many bank branches:
1) Peoples Bank
2) Hudson City
3) BOA
4) First Niagara
5) Chase
6) Some Credit Union – Name Escapes Me
7) Citibank
8) Bank of Greenwich
And don’t forget all the “informal” lending institutions, mostly ending in vowels and always charging, er, rather stiff interest.
Didn’t Cos Cob become an artists colony sometime after they slaughtered all the indians somewhere around Central Junior, I think?
It was indeed an artist colony of sorts, AJ, centered around the Bush Holly House. Check it out sometime – I believe they have paintings. My parents almost bought the Bush Holly house back in the early fifties – loved it, and were ready to go forward but, to their life-long astonishment their realtor was an honest woman and warned them that there were rumors that I-95 was routed to run right past the place. Indeed it did.
The site of the Indian massacre is still unknown. In, I believe, 1648, maybe a little later, the Dutch and the English put aside their enmity for a night and marched into the Siwanoy village where they burned everything to the ground, chopped women and children into pieces, tossed babies into burning wigwams – all the usual stuff – and then retreated for more drinks. The massacre could have happened where Cos Cob School is but some scholars have placed it as far north as Ward Pound Ridge in Bedford. It certainly did happen though, and there’s a horrifying account of it in Greenwich Library, written by a Mead. nasty stuff.
The road not taken, that woulda been a stitch.
CF, snowplow jockey, now shits on BOTH ends of town. : )
Sprucing up? What needs sprucing up? Oh, well, yeah, knock the Starbucks into the Mill Pond . . . that would be a BIG improvement.
BTW, lots happened between the massacre and the art colony. One fun fact – during the Revolutionary War, Cos Cob was a strategic target, believe it or not. The British targeted the salt works down in the Bush Holley House area.
This could be one of micro signs that the American economy is already recovering albeit slowly.
Dude –
We have covered this before. You dummy. Cos Cob is really “Taint Town”. That is its appropriate name.
It is not Greenwich, and it is not Stamford. It is nestled between the two, serving no real useful role. Hence the name. Taint Town is neither of these two, and serves no function. It is just there. Stuck between an asshole – that would be Stamford, and either a joy stick or a pleasure cave. All depending. And the latter would be Greenwich. Is this all too complex for you to grasp?
Now don’t get me wrong. Taint Town serves a purpose. It’s a buffer. We need those. And sometimes it feels really good to scratch. But nowhere near as good as the other two alternatives.
Am I right or what?
Your Pal,
Walt
PS – And your post above on the dead Indian babies. Are you taunting me for my dead baby jokes? Well quit it out if you aren’t!!
From Daniel Mead History of the Town of Greenwich 1857:
The soldiers then divided into two parties, and from different directions poured their deadly fire upon the Indians, who, when thus attacked, found the trees an insufficient protection. The brave Sinawoys fought long and desperately; but the arrow and the tomahawk, of necessity, yielded to the bullet, bayonet, and broadsword. More than once the Indians made gallant charges, hoping to break the lines of their enemies. But the incessant firing thinned their numbers, and they at last retired, leaving between one and two hundred braves dead on the scene of the first terrible struggle. At the more permanent inclosure of the village they rallied, hoping there more effectually to defend themselves, and resolved there to make their final, desperate struggle for victory. Sheltered by the light palisades, if so they may be called, they once more poured forth incessant flights of arrows upon the Dutch. The latter now advanced from the northeast and the southeast in two divisions.
Fire was the enemy of the Indians, as often as it was their familiar weapon in destroying the habitations of the whites. And Underbill had learned its utility by his experience at the celebrated Pequot fort. To cast a firebrand upon the row of dry bark huts and wigwams, was but the work of a moment; and a most terrible destruction now awaited them. Roasted and tortured to agony by the fire, they darted out here and there from the flames only to be brought to the ground by the unerring aim of the soldiery, who were on the alert for the poor victims. Finally their horrid moans and cries were hushed, and the flames and the hissing of the boiling pools of blood died away, leaving hundreds of crisped bodies on the blood-stained snow.
And thus miserably perished from six hundred to a thousand Sinawoy Indians, variously enumerated by different authors. And of the whole numberof warriors that had been gathered at the ancient village, only eight escaped. All, besides these and twelve who were taken prisoners at the first conflict on the knoll, were cut off in battle. These prisoners were sold as slaves, some to the English and some to the Dutch; for prisoners were then the spoils of war.
So quickly had this work of destruction been accomplished, that the night was yet far from being spent. The Dutch therefore, warmed and cheered by the fires that had scorched and crisped their enemies, spent the remainder of the night upon the field; and when the morning came and the sun had arisen and looked upon the work of the preceding night, they threw the dead bodies of the Indians into heaps and covered them with the ashesof their village and frozen earth and snow, and left them without farther monument. Yet the mounds thus formed bore testimony to the place of the battle for many years. Tradition has long pointed out with accuracy the place of these mounds. An aged lady, Mrs. Howe by name, who lived to the advanced age of a hundred and two years, and who died some forty years since, remembered these mounds distinctly. Five of them she said were between the present houses of J. K. Stearns, Esq., and Mrs. Hitchcock, and twenty were scattered about just across the lane southeast of the present residence of William White, Esq., on the land of Edward Mead. And some fifty years, or more, ago, Joseph Sackett, who lived close by, was digging with one of his men for the purpose of covering potatoes from the cold of winter,—which was then done by digging four or five feet in the ground,—and came upon one of these settled heaps, then mostly turned to dust. But the good old farmer turned to his man, whose name was Avery, and told him to “throw in the potatoes any way” for the bones couldn’t hurt them if they were “Injins;” and in they went, and I believe were kept safe just as the old man had said. Bushels of flint arrow-heads have been plowed up by the owners of land on all parts of Strickland’s plain. Some of them are beautifully cut from the finest white flint; but the greater part of them are rougher hewn, from blue flint. Their old burial place as yet is not all extinct; but what remains is but a monument of the carelessness of the people of the neighborhood. Not only is the place neglected, but absolutely is being demolished by the penny grinders who “want dirt to fill in docks, or for some other purpose. It should have been fenced long ago, and protected from men who will take dirt from dead men’s bones.
Chris, Route 1 Riverside is an eyesore from the Mianus River all the way to Old Greenwich. Cos Cob has a bad stretch between Stanwich Road & Strickland, the remainder beats Riverside hands down. It’s time to ease up on your bashing of Cos Cob.
Are those informal lenders really charging more than the banks? Borrowing at near 0% and charging 18%to 30% credit card interest ain’t a bad business.
When I was a kid, my favorite exhibit at the Bruce Museum was a skull with a Quartz arrowhead sticking out of it. It really engaged my imagination. It hasn’t been on display for many years. Anyone know what happened to it?
AJ, they used to have a complete Indian skeleton too. They were both hidden in the basement when the PC crowd came to power and I’m sure they were dumpstered years ago.
Speaking to Chris or any of the “silver spoon” club members about the virtues of Cos Cob is a waste of time. Their reality as based on trying to catch up to what ever is going on at the Belle Haven Club or Indian Harbor. What they don’t realize is no one in Cos Cob wants them as their neighbor. I’d rather live next door to a bank than a real estate agent, or a Wall Street/hedge fund scam artist. The problem with Cos Cob today is many of their fake friends can’t afford to live in Riverside, and they are polluting Cos Cob. Encourage Club Road to go multi-family so we can clean up “back country” Cos Cob.
On a side note- let’s be serious- the Fountains should be thankful that they landed in Riverside- a Gideon in Cos Cob- seriously….that’s an ass kicking everyday walking to Cos Cob School.
You’re just bitter because we never paid your father for that last dump run lo, so many years ago. We told him to wipe his feet and doff his cap before entering the house but did he listen?
Have you been to the Cos Cob Dunkin Donuts since they reconfigured the parking lot for the new Chase bank? It has far less parking spaces and it seems Chase customers will exit thru DD’s lot. Which is posted with a no left turn sign with a Chase logo. I was leaving behind an EMT rig who of course was turning left on the post road, even tho there are 2 Chase signs saying right turn only. sheez.
If Cos Cob can secede from Connecticut, and truly become Little Switzerland, I’m a buyer.
The dumpster?!?! Nooooo. Bruce Museum, say it ain’t so. Bring back the skull.
What a shame. The restaurant previously in that location, Bella Nona (sp?)
may have lacked class and panache, but it served a useful purpose by offering average (okay, below average!) food at a low price for families who needed a night out. The last thing the neighborhood needs is yet another Chase — the worst bunch of lying, thieving, bank skunks around.
I miss Bella Nona. And the statue of the Grandma wearing the creepy work gloves out front had character.