Northfield is located in the southern part of the town of Litchfield. The main road from Thomaston to Litchfield, Connecticut Route 254, has bypassed the community, leaving it on a side road. Northfield is a quiet residential village, still largely surrounded by farmland, though the rows of small houses on Main Street between the green and Route 254 suggest the possibility of some small mid-nineteenth century industry. A few recent commuters' houses have been built in the countryside, but with only one exception, the buildings facing the green date from the nineteenth century, and except for the Northfield Congregational Church, they are all single-family houses or outbuildings connected with these houses.

The green itself is a long, narrow triangle bounded by Old Northfield and Camp Hill Roads and Main Street. The narrow base of the triangle, the Main Street side, is the lower end of a gentle slope. The ground is slightly uneven, and small wildflowers grow in the grass. Maple trees stand at regular intervals around the edges of the green. The center is dominated by a brownstone Civil War monument. Its form, an obelisk standing on a die and surmounted by a flaming urn, is of a type stylish in the 1850s. On the die are carved the names of local residents who died during the war, and on the obelisk appears the single word 'Lincoln.' An iron fence surrounds the monument. Downhill from the monument grows an evergreen tree (presumably a Christmas tree), and downhill from that stands a flagpole, dated 1981 and dedicated to the memory of Lorton Wood. Wooden tubs filled with flowers flank the flagpole, and a pair of rough wooden benches (halved logs on stands) face it. There are small flower gardens, one at each corner of the green.