The Main Street Historic District in Danbury, Connecticut, United States, is the oldest section of that city, at its geographical center.

Its contributing properties, ranging from the 1780s to the 1930s, reflects a diversity of uses and styles with a heavy concentration of the Italianate commercial architecture of the late 19th century.

Businesses formed a special taxing district to raise money for infrastructure maintenance and improvement, and the city used state grants to build popular attractions near downtown like a rail museum and ice arena.

Danbury's population has also increased in the late 20th century as it became a popular exurban enclave for New York metropolitan area commuters, and Latin American immigrants have settled in and established businesses along Main Street despite tensions with the city's mayor.

[2] The district is a heavily developed urban core with mostly commercial buildings, predominantly two-story structures fronting on Main Street, some mixed use with apartments on the upper stories.

Another mode of transportation, the automobile, began having an adverse effect on Main Street in the 20th century, routing traffic away from it and making outlying areas more commercially viable and accessible.

They established retail outlets in the Southern states, and were followed by local makers of boots, shoes, saddles and horn combs.

In 1829 the last parcel belonging to the Congregational church, a large lot on the west side of the common, was sold and subdivided to pay a departing minister.

The Fry & Gregory saddle factory, built in 1836 at 68 Main Street, is one of the extant buildings exemplifying commercial activity during this period.

The landowners of northern Main Street, also stockholders in the railroad, had its passenger depot built at the present location of the post office, helping to increase the value of their land and businesses.

The landowners and businessmen of southern Main Street spent their own money to remake the common into Elmwood Park, planting it with elm trees and a hay crop.

The hatters were skilled workers who could afford to buy or even build their own homes rather than live in crowded tenements, and found the side streets to the west ideal for this purpose.

Wooster Square, the intersection of Main, Elm and White, became a focal point of northern downtown due to the train station's presence.

In 1873, the current jail building replaced the one built in 1828, by then inadequate, and a High Victorian Gothic library was donated to the borough five years later by Alexander White, one of the leading hat industry executives.

[2] The Main and West intersection, now called City Hall Square, became the new center of the district, finally displacing the old Congregational church site to the south.

New commercial blocks began to reach three and four stories, and in 1887 the Union Savings Bank moved into its current building at 226–228 Main Street.

Newly designated U.S. highways 6, 7 and 202 followed Main, West and White streets through downtown, bringing in automobile traffic.

Car traffic also led to the establishment of dealerships on Main Street, primarily in the areas south of Elmwood Park.

In 1955, the flooding of the Still that followed hurricanes Connie, Diane and Ione badly damaged many businesses, particularly in the Wooster Square and White Street areas.

The Dodd Shop was saved from demolition by a move to its current location in 1958, and the Blackman House at 59 Main Street was converted into office space.

Downtown merchants who had been affected by the flood reacted by moving to newer and larger space on routes 6,7, 37 and 202 outside of the city center.

The empty, damaged space they left behind on the north and northwest of downtown was addressed by urban renewal programs of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which demolished whole blocks, partly to accommodate the rechanneling of the Still for flood control.

In combination with the expressway bypasses built for US 7 both north and south of the city, this made the outlying properties businesses had been moving to more accessible and competitive with downtown locations.

Remaining business owners responded by renovating and restoring their own properties, and the scope of preservation efforts began to expand from the old houses on the south end.

[2] The Danbury Preservation Trust, which had been formed in the late 1950s, received a state grant in 1979 to survey and inventory the historic buildings on Main and the nearby side streets.

In 1981, after the last Danbury Fair was held, Wilmorite Properties of Rochester, New York, bought the fairground and began developing it into a shopping mall.

It was the start of a planned complex that would include a movie theater, retail space and condominiums, all meant to attract middle class residents to the city.

The city also hired a consultant to look at plans to cluster similar retailers so downtown could match the mall in offering that to shoppers as well.

[8][9] By the middle of the decade these efforts had succeeded, helped in part by Danbury's transformation from industrial town to distant exurb of New York City, with corporations such as Cartus and Duracell building major facilities in the area and new housing going up in the areas on the city's periphery as commuters sought less expensive housing still within commuting distance of Manhattan.

This time they were from Latin America, primarily Ecuador and Brazil, working as day labor at construction sites all over Fairfield County.