There’s the Knights of Columbus building, the national Catholic fraternal organization’s headquarters, a glass tower anchored by four colossal, rust-colored cylinders that the architectural historian Vincent Scully once labeled a “jackbooted sentinel of corporate power.” There’s the New Haven Coliseum, an immense monolith, which a film company wanting to do Rollerball 2 once got interested in because it looks like it might have been built in a bread-and-circuses aftermath of World War III. There’s the now-decrepit telephone company building, for instance (even when it was new it was described by the editor of Architectural Forum as “that great green hulk of a building which looks like it was designed by the janitor”). Parts of Oak Street, on the other hand, were rebuilt. Beyond the spur lie a parking garage, several blocks of parking lots with chain-link fence around them, and then a wide, grass-covered stretch of emptiness that was once Legion Avenue and was slated to become more highway - though nothing has ever been built there. Granted, part of the old Oak Street neighborhood is now a highway spur that ends abruptly in the middle of downtown. Of course,” he winds up, raising the issue that haunts people here, “the redevelopment of Legion Avenue created a very sparse grassland which changed our lives.” Nick DiMassa, who grew up in another neighborhood but played ball with a lot of Oak Street kids, puts it more bluntly: “They screwed over New Haven,” he says. Sunday mornings on Legion Avenue were unbelievable: the hustle, the bustle, people came from all over to shop, to eat, to socialize…. “It was alive, it was exciting, it was always uplifting, and we all felt that it belonged to us. Vine, who manufactures and imports costume jewelry, is one of the night’s honorees, and he handily sums up one of the chief strains of conversation in the room. “I can think of no other place in the world that I would rather have grown up in,” proclaims Barry Vine in his speech to the assembled crowd. “It was a sacred spot,” muses Sid Bruskin, the former owner of a bicycle shop in downtown New Haven. They put in their time in insurance or collections or fuel oil, and now, their voices rough with age, they sit and schmooze about the old neighborhood. Many of them are nearing or past retirement and living in the suburbs. Some 300 former residents have paid $30 apiece to be at the Oak Street Reunion tonight at Anthony’s. Forty-three years after the razing, Oak Street’s scattered residents still haven’t forgotten the affront.Įver since the mid-1960s, they have gathered once a year to honor their own and to reminisce. So the city razed it, giving it the honor of becoming the first stage of a massive urban renewal program that transformed the city’s face and made New Haven ground zero during the 1960s for federally financed experiments with urban form. City leaders considered Oak Street their worst slum, “a hard core of cancer which had to be removed,” as New Haven’s mayor at the time put it. Jews, Italians, African Americans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Irish, Greeks, and others lived cheek by jowl in long rows of dark, timeworn tenements and cold-water flats with junk-strewn back lots. Most of the families who lived there were Italian or Jewish, but Oak Street - which included not only the street itself, but also its extension, the commercial stretch known as Legion Avenue - was where new arrivals scrambling for a foothold usually wound up. From there, through the haze down the coast, one can make out downtown New Haven’s skyline and the buildings that stand where the old neighborhood once flourished.Īt the time of its death in 1957, New Haven’s Oak Street neighborhood was one of the city’s densest and poorest communities. And from time to time it stands quietly at the edge of the patio behind Anthony’s Oceanview Restaurant, in a far-flung little sliver of New Haven, Connecticut, and gazes out at Long Island Sound. It gathers around the fountain with colored lights, joking with the young Italian waiters as they slip through the crowd. It lines up at the open bar, in sports jackets and ties, slapping backs and laughing. On this occasion, it mills around tables piled with red and white pizzas, stuffed breads, and antipasto. If you’ve ever wondered what an extinct neighborhood looks like, I can tell you. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
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