D11 History Minute: Why isn't the Merritt Parkway "straight" through Greenwich?

The curves in the highway through mid-country Greenwich avoided disturbing a prominent estate on Clapboard Ridge Road

You can see the large curve at the leftmost part of the gray line in the image of the Merritt end-to-end. The highway was relocated before construction to avoid Henry Croft’s Grahampton estate on Clapboard Ridge Road.

According to the Greenwich Time:

Another transportation oddity that has perplexed generations of commuters is the unusual curve on the Merritt Parkway through Greenwich, defying the otherwise straight path that runs parallel to Route 1 to the south. Blame it on a wealthy industrialist, Henry Croft, who died in 1947. He refused to have his estate along Clapboard Ridge Road and Grahampton Lane disturbed by the parkway, completed in 1938, and he and other politically connected backcountry residents — called “blockers” at the time — successfully pushed the parkway to the north of them, creating a bulge that persists to this day.