Old Saybrook, Connecticut

Old Saybrook’s most famous resident was Katharine Hepburn, born in Hartford to an heiress to the Corning Glass fortune and a urologist father. In 1911 Dr. Thomas Hepburn bought a summer home in Fenwick, Old Saybrook in 1911. In 1997, after retiring from the most honored career in AMerican movie history, Katharine Hepburn moved from her New York City home to live in the family retreat full time. She died here in 2003 at the age of 96.

Old Town Hall was constructed in 1908 in the Colonial Revival style as a performance house for the old Saybrook Musical and Dramatic Club. The Town Hall also screened the first movies in Old Saybrook as the center of the town’s entertainment for more than 40 years. In the 1950s the Town of Old Saybrook brought the theater to an end, dividing the audience chamber into town offices and turning the stage into a conference room. In 2003, with the town offices removed into more expansive quarters, the building was restored to its original use as a theater. Two years later, the Hepburn family approved the naming of the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center.