In the 1960s a New Haven firm told the Olson family there weren't enough people around Mystic, Connecticut, to carry a mall.
So in 1973 the family opened Olde Mistick Village instead: separate colonial-style shops facing a green with a gazebo, birdhouses, and a duck pond.
That first year the shops included a toy store, an IGA grocery with a deli counter, a full-service restaurant, and a two-screen cinema.
From 2003 restaurants ladled chowder inside the shops each winter for charity. Every December the Festival of Lights sets more than 6,000 candles along the walkways.
The green is still there this fall, ringed by colonial buildings. That leaves the shops around it, and which of those first ones are still open.
A mall plan swapped for a colonial village
In 1963 Martin Olson bought a farm in Mystic, Connecticut, just off Interstate 95 with a conventional mall in mind.
Edward Malley Company of New Haven looked at the idea and told him the local population was too small to support it.
What replaced the mall was organized around walking instead of an enclosed concourse.
Separate buildings, each made to look unlike the next, faced a town green.
A duck pond, gazebo, birdhouses, trees, and planted paths filled out the setting.
There was no single enclosed building or attached parking deck; cars stayed around the edge while shoppers moved between stores outdoors.
Olson's twin children, Jerry and his sister, shaped that alternative around a New England settlement of about 1720, taking Peddler's Village in Pennsylvania as their model.
Jerry took charge of construction, while his sister handled management and leasing. Work began in 1972.
Olde Mistick Village opens on the green
More than 400 people came to the green in front of the Meeting House on September 11, 1973, for the dedication of Olde Mistick Village.
The new shopping village sat off Interstate 95 at Exit 90 in Mystic, Connecticut, with its stores spread among separate colonial-style buildings.
The first store to open its doors was the Toy Soldier, which sold toys, dolls, puzzles, books, games, and collectible soldiers.
Steak Loft opened at the front of the property as the village's full-service restaurant.
Colonial Market, an IGA grocery with a deli counter, gave shoppers an everyday store among the specialty ones, and a two-screen cinema went up the same year.
The new shops ran straight into Connecticut's blue laws, which restricted retail on Sundays.
Martin Olson's daughter had been fighting the Sunday rules since the 1960s, and now she took up the fight for the village's tenants.
She complained that small retailers were being held back while other industries were allowed to keep working.
In 1974 the merchants' own group, the Olde Mistick Village Merchants' Association, was incorporated, and they were still fighting the Sunday restrictions in 1977.
The twin cinema grows to four screens
The two-screen cinema was the part of the village that kept growing.
A third screen was added in the early 1980s, and moviegoers could park anywhere on a property that by 1998 held 28 freestanding buildings on about 22 acres, with the paths between them kept outdoors.
By then the theater filled a 10,300-square-foot building of its own and ran first-run films alongside specialty ones.
From 2003 the shops had a winter event too.
At the first Cabin Fever Festival and Charity Chowder Cook Off, restaurants and caterers ladled out chowder inside the village shops; visitors paid for sample cups.
They voted for a favorite, and the money went to local charity.
In September 2012 the cinema took on a stage.
With 185 seats and more than 1,000 square feet of stage for dance and theater, Mystic Stage gave Mystic Ballet a place to perform in the complex.
The project brought together Mystic Ballet, Martin Olson's daughter, and the theater's owner.
A fourth screen came in 2015, and by June 2016 the theater ran as Mystic Luxury Cinemas.
Around it were about 50 shops and eateries, among them Mango's Wood-Fired Pizza Co., The BoardWalk, Franklin's General Store, and Mystic Kite Shop.
Outdoor markets while the cinema is gutted
The pandemic shut the cinema in 2020, and its owners used the closure to rebuild.
Nearly everything inside was torn out (ceiling tiles, carpet, and seats), enough to fill 16 dumpsters, and by July the demolition and rebuilding were finished.
Heated reclining seats and 7.1 surround sound went in, and that October the rebuilt theater hosted the third annual Mystic Film Festival.
Out on the grounds, the village added programs held in the open air.
A Saturday farm market started in late July, and the first Farm to Village festival brought 17 vendors to the property in September.
On the village's 47th anniversary that September 11, a new waterwheel was dedicated to first responders from the attacks of that same date and to front-line workers of the pandemic.
November brought the third trunk show weekend across the whole village.
For the holidays the shops stayed open later, and the paths and buildings carried large displays of lights.
Go Fish leaves and Trattoria Amalfi moves in
By 2017 Go Fish occupied the building where the village's IGA grocery had opened in 1973.
Renovation work there exposed the outline of its old Colonial Market sign.
The project started in January, with reopening planned for April, and added outdoor dining and more natural light.
Go Fish began planning a move out of the village in 2022.
That April, Stonington's Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously for its plan at 29 Old Stonington Road, the former Sailor Ed's property: half of an old building there would come down, and the rest would become a 175-seat Go Fish.
No one from the public spoke against it.
Trattoria Amalfi was announced for the old grocery building in July 2022, with a major renovation ahead and an opening promised within a few months.
The wait ran into the next year. The restaurant finally opened in May 2023.
It could seat more than 200, with two patios outside and, indoors, a big bar and a separate room for private dinners.
New shops arrive before the 50th anniversary
Other spaces were changing hands at the same time.
In February 2022 CROP Salon moved out of downtown Mystic into a village space roughly triple its old shop.
Alice's Haunted Little Bookshop opened that April and Manufaktura in May, with The Bees Knees and Beef Jerky Experience due later that spring.
Seven Birds Ice Cream started serving from a walk-up window, and by June 2023 it had taken over the old Mango's Ice Cream spot across from the pizza place.
More came in 2023. Arisu opened that June with anime, manga, capsule machines, a retro arcade, large statues, and a Japanese food market.
Rusty Relic also had a second store in the village, this one selling Amish-made furniture and home decor.
The village turned 50 in the middle of the arrivals.
Taste of Mystic came back for the anniversary weekend, and the public ceremony was held on September 12, 2023, a day after the anniversary date, with about 50 shops open, roughly half of them owned by women.
Martin Olson's daughter, then 86, was retiring from daily management.
The same year two Hallmark productions used the village's streets, green, and storefronts as their sets.
One of the 2023 arrivals ended up depending on the village entirely.
Plants by the Pool had started in a backyard greenhouse in Waterford in 2020 and later opened a storefront at the Velvet Mill.
It added a second shop in the village in 2023 under a new name, Plants by the Village, and when it closed the Velvet Mill store in the spring of 2024, the village became its only shop.
More than 50 businesses around the green
In May 2026 Mystic Knotwork moved its small Holmes Street shop into the village, keeping its production, retail, and shipping operation on Cottrell Street, and the move was complete by June.
The new space gave it more room to sell and to make, and its artisans tie and customize rope work while customers watch.
Olde Mistick Village is open, and its two oldest names are still in business.
The Toy Soldier, the first shop of 1973, keeps its wooden floors inside and a big bear figure outside for photographs.
Steak Loft serves every day, offers private rooms and a salad bar, and puts on live entertainment five nights a week.
Mystic Luxury Cinemas runs four screens with heated recliners, reserved seats, beer, wine, and hot food, and Trattoria Amalfi fills the old grocery building.
Arisu and Seven Birds Ice Cream are still trading among the shops that came in 2022 and 2023, and Plants by the Village keeps its only store in a sage-green storefront that has a yellow bench.
The calendar keeps the green busy.
Scarecrows stand along the paths through October, and Santa is scheduled to sit in the Meeting House in mid-December.
Each year more than 6,000 candles line the paths for the Festival of Lights, and the 43rd is set for December 11.
In 1998 the village held 28 freestanding buildings on about 22 acres.
More than 50 businesses are open to shoppers around the same green now.
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