Explore the stories behind the places
Every place has a story.
Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut.
Browse the complete collection of Story Behind The Place stories — from the people and decisions that shaped a place to the history, science, and engineering that explain how it became what it is.
Each story starts with a place. What happened there is the story.
Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island sits only a few hundred feet from Manhattan. For more than a century, New York used that narrow strip of land to isolate prisons, hospitals and an asylum. Then the city decided it should become something entirely different.
Groton, Connecticut
In 1781, America’s most infamous traitor returned to the state where he was born—and Groton would never forget what followed.
Today, a submarine rests along the town’s waterfront.
How those two stories came to belong to the same place is the story behind Groton, Connecticut.
Richmond, Indiana
A piano factory in Indiana. A converted lumber kiln beside a railroad track. And a decision that changed American music forever.
Hilton Head Island
Most people know it for the beaches and the golf. What happened here in 1861 changed American history. Almost no one knows the story.
Season One
Story Behind The Place has a new home!
We're bringing the complete Season One archive with us. Until the move is complete, you can continue to read each of the original stories below.