70 Years Later, Putnam Street Reborn

Seven decades after she moved from Putnam Street to West Haven, Marie Gagliardi returned to the house she grew up in to see years of decay reversed.

“You did a beautiful job,” Gagliardi (at right in photo) told Mayor John DeStefano (at left) Tuesday morning.

Gagliardi showed up to a ceremonial groundbreaking Tuesday celebrating a $3.2 million government-funded makeover of Putnam Street, where she lived in the 1930s and 40s.

The city is rehabbing three homes along that street and building another four. Each two-family house will be sold to owners who will agree to live in half of the building and rent out the other half. The project, which will create 22 units of housing on a two-block area, is being paid for by $1.6 million in city money and $1.6 million federal neighborhood stabilization funds. The project includes seven houses the city is directly fixing up, as well as three being renovated by Mutual Housing/ Neighborworks with federal money. It’s all part of a larger effort to rescue houses abandoned by the Hill Development Corporation when the not-for-profit housing agency went belly-up.

Gagliardi moved into 197 Putnam in the 1930s at age 2. Her dad, Pasqual DelMonaco, was an insurance agent for Metropolitan Life. Young Marie attended the former Horace Day School around the corner. Her family was one of many Italian-American families that populated the area at that time. He raised seven kids there, she said. Gagliardi recalled that her mother, a ​“neatnik” like herself, used to make her polish the mahogany bannister every Saturday.

The city wasn’t always planning to save her house: It sought to tear it and two others down, before historic preservationists stepped in and halted the demolition.

Just last summer, her former home looked like a boarded-up dump (pictured). Then Brownstone Contracting Company of Old Saybrook won a competitive bidding process to rehab 138, 181 and 197 Putnam.

On Tuesday, she returned with a portrait of her home and compared them. She pronounced the facade restored to historic accuracy — all except for a stained-glass window, which was not replaced.

Joe O’Donnell of Brownstone Contracting said Gagliardi’s home and the two others on Putnam should be fully rehabbed by the end of June. His company is also building four homes on the street; those should be done by May 1, 2014, he said. O’Donnell invited a crowd of city employees and neighbors into 181 Putnam (pictured) for a reception after the groundbreaking.

Brownstone hired Ellen Cessario, a personal chef from Meriden, to cater the event with hummus-and-pita sandwiches, seafood salad, and Italian rollups.

The city plans to sell the homes for a starting price of $150,000 to $160,000, according to Erik Johnson (at right in photo), director of the city’s Livable City Initiative. The homes will be sold to families with an income not higher than 120 percent of the area median income, which is $97,080 for a family of four.