Academy Point at Mystic’s 25th Anniversary Celebration
Academy Point at Mystic’s 25th Anniversary Celebration marks a quarter-century for the Mystic senior living community on Thursday, August 20, with an afternoon gathering at its historic Academy Lane home.
The celebration runs from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. and commemorates 25 years since Academy Point opened in 2001. The building’s story, however, reaches much further back. Before residents moved into apartments here, generations of Mystic children climbed the same hill to attend school at Mystic Academy.
Today, Academy Point at Mystic provides assisted living and memory care while preserving much of the character of the former school. The anniversary offers a chance to celebrate both chapters of a property that’s been part of Mystic life in one form or another for more than 170 years.
25 Years at Academy Point
Academy Point opened as a senior living community in 2001, following Benchmark Senior Living’s purchase of the former Mystic Academy property in 2000.
The three-story, steel-and-masonry building was converted into a 70-apartment assisted living community while retaining connections to its past. Historic features were preserved as the former classrooms and school spaces took on a completely different purpose.
Twenty-five years later, Academy Point offers assisted living as well as specialized Mind & Memory Care for residents living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Its amenities include private apartments, dining, healthcare support, transportation, social and wellness programs and common spaces overlooking the Mystic area.
The anniversary arrives during a notable year for the community. Academy Point was named a 2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Assisted Living community, the only community in the greater Mystic area to receive that designation this year.
Before Academy Point, There Was Mystic Academy
Here’s where the building gets considerably more interesting.
Mystic Academy dates to 1850, when the school was established in a small building on High Street. Two years later, it moved to Academy Point, where its first dedicated school building was constructed.
That original structure didn’t survive.
In 1910, it was torn down and replaced with the brick school building that remains at Academy Point today. The new Mystic Academy was modeled after Broadway School on the opposite side of the Mystic River.
Over the decades, the grades taught there changed. At different times Mystic Academy accommodated students ranging from kindergarten through high school. In 1961, it became an elementary school serving grades one through six.
The school finally closed during the 1990s.
But its former students didn’t necessarily leave it behind.
When the Students Came Back
One of the best examples came in 2018.
Twenty-one former Mystic Academy students returned to the building for a reunion with their sixth-grade teacher, Thomas Cavanaugh. They had been his students in 1968, 50 years earlier.
Their old school was now Academy Point.
The reunion became a weekend-long return to Mystic, including a dinner, boat ride on the Mystic River, lunch at the Mystic & Noank Library and a bus tour through the neighborhood where many of the students had grown up.
It’s a small detail, but one that captures what’s unusual about the building.
A place where Mystic children once spent their school days eventually became a home for another generation of local residents. Some of the people who remember it as a school are now themselves old enough to be part of the generation Academy Point serves.
The building changed. Its connection to Mystic didn’t.
A New Chapter Beginning in 2001
Benchmark Senior Living purchased the former school in 2000 and opened Academy Point the following year.
Rather than replacing the old Mystic Academy with an entirely new development, the property was adapted for senior living.
Today, the community sits at 20 Academy Lane, overlooking the Mystic area and within walking distance of downtown. Academy Point emphasizes the history of the former school as part of the community’s identity rather than disguising what the building once was.
That makes the 25th anniversary something of a double celebration.
It’s 25 years of Academy Point, certainly.
But it’s also another milestone in the much longer life of a Mystic landmark that has been educating, housing and bringing people together on Academy Point since the middle of the 19th century.
Event Details
Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
Time: 3:30–6:30 p.m.
Event: Academy Point at Mystic’s 25th Anniversary Celebration
Location: Academy Point at Mystic
Address: 20 Academy Lane, Mystic, CT 06355
Occasion: Celebrating 25 years of Academy Point at Mystic
Historic Site: Former Mystic Academy School
Academy Point Opened: 2001
Phone: (860) 536-1133
