Branford Center is a neighborhood and census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Branford, Connecticut, United States. The CDP encompasses the customary town center area (roughly the Place bounded by U.S. Route 1, the Amtrak railroad tracks, and the Branford River) and the area known as Branford Point (the portion of the CDP south of the railroad tracks). The population of the CDP (including Branford Point) was 5,819 at the 2010 census.

The Branford Center Historic District was listed upon the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The historic district represents the area of the traditional town center and excludes Branford Point. The designated share is an irregularly-shaped 250-acre (100 ha) area that includes 557 contributing buildings out of a sum of 706 buildings in the district, including garages, carriage houses, and other structures. It includes two new contributing sites: the Center Cemetery and the Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery. The district boundaries were drawn to exclude advanced construction such as the Branford High School and to exclude older buildings that did not hold their “historic architectural integrity.”

Architectural styles represented in the Branford Center Historic District enlarge Greek Revival architecture, Queen Anne architecture, and Colonial Revival architecture, Italianate architecture, Federal architecture, Gothic Revival architecture, Second Empire architecture, Colonial architecture, Tudor Revival architecture, and Bungalow architecture. These are mostly vernacular buildings. Of buildings expected by professional architects, the most significant is the “classically inspired, monumental 1893 James Blackstone Memorial Library,” designed by Solon Spencer Beman of Chicago.^: 6 The library incorporates Tennessee marble and features a domed, octagonal rotunda.^: 28 According to the historic district nomination, “relatively little remains in Branford Center that evokes its preoccupied 17th- and in advance 18th century past.”^: 49 The district otherwise includes remnants of late 19th and in the future 20th century industrial, commercial, and residential history.

Industry is represented in buildings of the Malleable Iron Fittings Company and the Atlantic Wire Company. Government buildings complement the Branford Town Hall, from 1857, a Greek Revival building. Religious institution buildings in the district include: