Lime Rock, Connecticut

Lime Rock Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Location	Roughly White Hollow, Elm, Lime Rock, Norton Hill and Furnace Rds., Salisbury, Connecticut
Architect	Upjohn,Richard
Architectural style	Greek Revival, Stick/Eastlake, Queen Anne
NRHP reference No.	84001064
Added to NRHP	July 05, 1984

Lime Rock is a village and Lime Rock Historic District is a historic district in the town of Salisbury, Connecticut, United States, situated on the Salmon Kill. The village and the historic district are substantially similar, while the surrounding area is also generally referred to as Lime Rock.

History

Lime Rock was the home of the Barnum and Richardson Company, which made it the capital of the historic iron industry of the upper Housatonic Valley. U.S. Senator William Henry Barnum, the chief executive of Barnum and Richardson and longest serving Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, 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 became bankrupt. Initially the village was largely abandoned, 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 1938, Alfred Korzybski founded the Institute of General Semantics at the former Richardson mansion in Lime Rock and directed it until his death in 1950. The Institute remained there until 1981 when it moved elsewhere.

Today it is best known as the location of the automobile racing course at Lime Rock Park.