Florence Griswold Museum

Florence Griswold Museum Review

Central to Old Lyme's artistic reputation is this grand late-Georgian-style mansion owned by Miss Florence Griswold that served as a boardinghouse for members of the Lyme Art Colony in the first decades of the 20th century. When artists such as Willard Metcalf, Clark Voorhees, Childe Hassam, and Henry Ward Ranger flocked to the area to paint its varied landscape, Miss Florence offered housing as well as artistic encouragement. The house was turned into a museum in 1947 and underwent a major restoration completed in 2006 to restore it to its 1910 appearance, when the colony was in full flower (clues to the house's layout and decor in that era were gleaned from members' paintings). The museum's 10,000-square-foot Krieble Gallery, on the riverfront, hosts changing exhibitions of American art.