Enhancing Canton

Canton Main Street Inc. is both committed to preserving, enhancing and promoting Canton’s downtown area, located in Collinsville, and all of its town sectors.

View of Axe Factory from Main Street

Visit Collinsville

Originally called South Canton, the village of Collinsville grew up around the edge tool works of the Collins Company, founded in 1826. Most civic institutions from the bank to the post office and library began in the Collins office. At one time the company owned 195 residences of various styles and sizes to house its workforce

Learn more and take a virtual tour at: https://www.townofcantonct.org/beyond-tour

Have an idea to highlight Collinsville?

Stone pillars in Canton, CT

Visit North Canton

Originally designated “New Canton,” the area was renamed “North Canton” in 1837. Canton’s second school, second meetinghouse, second cemetery and second post office were here. Although considered a quiet, rural part of town, in the late eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth North Canton was a busy place with two blacksmith shops, a couple or three taverns, a powder mill, grist and sawmills, several cider mills and distilleries, a tannery, leather and shoemaking shop, and a button factory.

Learn more and take a virtual tour at: https://www.townofcantonct.org/north-tour

Have an idea to highlight North Canton?

Contact us today
Gazebo in Canton Village

Visit Canton Village

Variously called Suffrage, Canton Street and Canton Village, the area near the Canton Green was the commercial heart of the town before 1830 with inns, a church, schools, a lawyer, a tannery, wheelwrights, coopers, blacksmiths and other tradesmen and manufactories. This is largely owing to the presence of the Albany Turnpike which was completed in an improved form in 1764. Canton Village fell into eclipse in the mid nineteenth century as Collinsville rose as a center of edge tool manufacture.

By the 1960s, with the decline and closure of the Collins Company, this area reemerged as the business center of town as automobile transportation became increasingly important and Albany Turnpike became the principal artery of travel (U.S. Route 44).

Learn more and take a virtual tour at: https://www.townofcantonct.org/village-tour

Have an idea to highlight Canton Village?

Former school house in Canton

Visit Canton Center

Canton Center is the birthplace of the Town of Canton, dating from 1738 when Mercy Holcomb Barber, widow of Samuel Barber, settled here with her four sons a year after Richard Case II came to East Hill as the town’s first permanent resident. The Cherry Brook Valley widens in this area and has the best farmland in town, some of which is still cultivated. The General Assembly recognized the area as a distinct parish in 1750, incorporating the area as the First Ecclesiastical Society of West Simsbury.

Learn more and take a virtual tour at: https://www.townofcantonct.org/center-tour

Have an idea to highlight Canton Center?

Contact us today