Connecticut Is Home To An Endearing Polish Influenced Town Known For Industrial Flair

It's a city with a motto that says it all: 'Industry fills the hive and enjoys the honey.' New Britain, Connecticut, is not only a hive for busy worker bees who populated a busy manufacturing town nicknamed "Hardware City" in the late 1800s; it's is also a honey pot of Polish immigrants that have spread and flourished from the late 19th century until now, bringinging with them the language, food, architecture, and art that shapes the Little Poland area of the city on Broad Street.

Like the Pennsylvania town that is widely recognized as "America's Little Switzerland," New Britain's Little Poland is more than just a modern recreation of one of Europe's best-preserved medieval city centers in Krakow or a nostalgic dupe for a Polish city of yesteryear. Instead, it's a place where the real, hard-working longtime residents of Polish descent — as well as later waves of post-World War II and post-Iron Curtain-era immigrants — have chosen to ensure the Polish language, religious life, and culinary, and social traditions, carry on.

Visitors and locals alike enjoy this unique slice of Euro-American crossover in an underrated New England city that's only 34 miles north of New Haven, where you can rent a car or take the Amtrak Hartford Line or a Greyhound bus to cross the short distance between the two places. From Connecticut's capital, Hartford, which has its own international airport, New Britain is a mere 15 miles away and can be reached by local bus or taxi.

You can do more than eat pierogi, cabbage, and potato pancakes at TripAdvisor's top-rated Little Poland restaurant, the Belvedere Cafe (82 Broad Street) when you visit Little Poland. Stock up on these and other Polish treats and deli items at the Roly Poly Bakery (587 Main Street), learn Polish folk dances and study the language at the Polish American Foundation (27 Grove Hill Street), or discover your own Polish roots with the help of the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast (8 Lyle Road). And if you're visiting New Britain in June, attend the one-day Little Poland Festival, where more than 30,000 residents and visitors gather to celebrate Polish heritage.

At the New Britain Museum of American Art (56 Lexington Street), special exhibitions often feature Polish and Polish-American contributors that honor the local community. Beyond the local Polish contributions, the museum pays homage to the diverse immigrant roots of American artists and the multiculturalism that defines the colonial and modern-day experience in the U.S.

Once home to a variety of metalworks manufacturers — including American Hardware Corporation, the decorative furniture hardware company P&F Corbin, and tool-maker Stanley Works (now Stanley Black & Decker) – New Britain's 19th century immigrant population flocked to the city for its plentiful factory jobs. While many of those companies have gone out of business or moved overseas, this underrated industrial hub is still a city that remains friendly to manufacturing and home to many well-known companies.

At the New Britain Industrial Museum (59 West Main Street), visitors can peruse the long list of inventors and inventions that originated in New Britain every Wednesday through Sunday. The museum has collected inventions and innovations from more than 200 years of the city's history. Within the collection, you'll discover manufacturing machines and machine parts, hand tools, ball bearings, building hardware, and good old-fashioned consumer goods from dozens of companies that manufactured — or still manufacture — in New Britain. The buzz of the hive certainly lives on.