Mystic ― Mystic River Historical Society will host a talk by Stephen Glazier on the history of Mystic businesses at the Mystic Congregational Church at 7:30 p.m. Jan 25.

Featuring photos from the time period and extensive information on businesses, prominent local families of the era, and the transformation of Mystic from an industrial town to a tourist destination, his presentation will span an approximately 40-year time period from the construction of the Mystic River bascule bridge in 1922 to the 1960s.

“This is probably one of the most successful transformations like this that has ever been,” Glazier said. “I think we need to know some of the details of how this happened.”

Glazier grew up working in his grandfather’s store, Davey’s Newsstand on the Newbury block of downtown Mystic, which burned down in the Great Mystic Fire of 1960. He drew from his personal experience, academic studies, and research he has done while writing a book on the same topic to understand how and why a significant change took place.

“What I’m going to talk about is the transformation from basically a factory town, which is what we were kind of were — 1940s to 1950s — to completely a tourist town,” Glazier said.

Many of the spurs to change he found were subtle, like the installation of sewers on the Groton side of the river in the 1950s, which he said allowed for greater growth in the area, including restaurants and condominiums.

In research for his book, he also studied how a vibrant and successful business community was created, by local business owners living in close proximity to each other and centralized locations of essential businesses such as grocery stores, pharmacies and newsstands, and ultimately became a nexus that allowed other businesses to thrive.

“There’s propinquity — there’s that nearness, that really forms strong communities that really doesn’t exist any longer, but it did play a role in business.”

Glazier said preservation of information from the era is essential and asks anyone with materials from the time period to reach out to the historical society.

The event is free to historical society members and there is a suggested donation of $5 for nonmembers.

Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m. with the program beginning at 7:30 p.m.