Flowers for Manchester, CT

For half a century the Cheney Brothers mills made Manchester the silk capital of America, and the town still wears the evidence: brick mill halls converted to lofts, the Cheney mansions along Hartford Road and Forest Street, and a Main Street laid out wide enough to feel like a boulevard. That width matters every Thanksgiving morning, when the Manchester Road Race sends thousands pounding down it, and it matters to flower delivery the other 364 days, because the run from a downtown shop to almost any address in 06040 or 06042 is short and straight. Manchester Memorial Hospital on Haynes Street, the storefronts near Center Park, Highland Park's market corner under Case Mountain, the newer subdivisions and big-box rows up by Buckland Hills — one compact grid ties all of it together between I-384 and I-84.

Other Connecticut cities.