Nora Grace-Flood photo
87 Webster St. destroyed, in preparation for Dixwell block's rebirth.
As an excavator arm reached out to tear down the wall of the old Elks Club at Webster Street and Dixwell Avenue, Beverly Barnes lifted a hand to shield her face from the sight — then readjusted her focus to an anticipated future of bustling sidewalks, modernized apartments and new neighbors.
Barnes joined a small crowd of around ten people who arrived at 87 Webster St. Thursday morning to observe the planned demolition of the former home of the century-old African American social club.
The Webster Street structure was the first of 12 buildings slated for wrecking over the next six months in preparation for Connecticut Community Outreach and Revitalization Program’s (ConnCORP) broader redevelopment of Dixwell Plaza.
“This moment is not merely the demolition of a building or block, it’s the commencement of what is possible,” said ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons.
A rendering of ConnCORP's anticipated Dixwell redevelopment.
Over recent years, that organization has bought up buildings on the west side of Dixwell Avenue spanning from Webster to Charles, with the intent to rehab the Dixwell stretch once informally known as “Black Wall Street” into an overhauled neighborhood district featuring 184 apartments (20 percent of which will be set aside at below-market rents), a 18,460 square-foot food hall, a 20,000 square-foot grocery store, 5,600 square feet of Dixwell Avenue-fronting retail space, a new headquarters for the job-training nonprofit ConnCAT, a healthcare clinic, a daycare center, a public plaza, a 392-space temporary surface parking lot, a 350-seat performing arts center, a five-story office building, 13 new townhouses, and a 340-space garage. Read more on those plans here.
People brace themselves early Thursday morning...
... For this sight.
Construction on the project should begin by the summer of 2024. Clemons said that prior to starting demolition, ConnCORP spent three months remediating all of those buildings, most of which were constructed around the 1960s, to ensure their wreckage wouldn’t spread toxic material to the air.
On Thursday, some onlookers shed tears as the lodge tumbled to the ground. The building itself looked like it was crying, as water from a nearby Dust Buster, a large mist dispenser used to minimize the spread of debris from the demolition, dripped down the building’s roof.
“I had to turn around,” Barnes told the Independent, of the moment when construction workers first dug heavy equipment into the social center’s side. “There’s just so many memories packed into that one blow.”
One such memory was of watching her grandfather, Bill Hundley, dress up alongside his peers in “tuxes and tails” for the Elks’ annual ball at the Goffe Street Armory. She could still picture her grandmother in a “tiara and long-flowing scarf.” When Barnes turned 16, she couldn’t wait to accompany her grandfather to the special event — and watch as Hundley, a factory worker with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company — was greeted with gusto and respect by other members of the club.
“I just knew this whole ritual, this space, was really important to them,” Barnes, now 72 years old, reflected.
Gary Hogan (right) talks to the New Haven Register's Mark Zaretsky about the history of the Elks Club.
Gary Hogan, the current president of the Elks Club, just described the loss of the historic site as “sad.”
“I’m definitely gonna sit in the car and drop a tear in a minute,” he said. “I do feel responsible, that this is coming down when we haven’t created something else to take its place,” he said, noting that for the first time in the Elks’ 116 years of existence, the club has no official home.
The Elks have purchased an ex-church property at 329 Dixwell Ave. They are currently seeking zoning approvals in order to build a new lodge on site, which Hogan said will include a gallery commemorating the history of the Elks and old Dixwell. Read more about that here.
"Oh, snap!" Hogan said when he noticed an array of old Christmas decorations fall out of the building's wreckage. He'd been looking for those — and now he remembered they'd been stuffed behind one of the building's old vents.
“It will be my life mission,” the 65-year-old said, to see that undertaking through to fruition. The now-gone lodge building on Webster Street served not just as the home for an exclusive club, he argued, but a “community space, a place to worship, remember, fundraise, eat meals, seek shelter or ask for advice,” that remained a constant in the Dixwell neighborhood through years of economic and political ups and downs.
Hogan said that just as remaining on Dixwell is key to maintaining the Elks’ sense of home — in a predominantly Black community filled with old friends, churches, and situated close to familiar bus routes — having a physical meeting place will provide a launching pad for a sustained legacy of charity work.
Given that most of the Elks members are over 65 themselves, Hogan said he wants the Elks to focus on combating a sense of isolation among senior citizens by developing a senior center within the upcoming lodge and day programming for the many older folks living in nearby elderly housing complexes like Hannah Gray Home or the Prescott Bush Mall.
Beverly Barnes: "It’ll be nice to see people come back.”
Barnes touched on that same sense of isolation while expressing excitement for a redeveloped Dixwell.
She noticed the demolition underway while making her way over to the Q House’s senior center Thursday morning, where she’s taken to spending many days in her later years. While Barnes recalled a contented childhood full of community, she said that she now worries about crime in the neighborhood, and feels lonely since many of her family and friends have left Dixwell to escape issues like gun violence and theft.
And while she grew up idolizing her parents and elderly family, Barnes worries that younger generations today primarily feel disconnect and disgruntlement with senior citizens — an issue that she chalked up to “no longer seeing themselves as an extension of neighbors and community.”
Though Barnes cried at the thought of history lost during Thursday’s demolition, she said she is looking forward to ConnCORP’s plan to build a public plaza, where people can congregate and reconnect as neighbors. And she hopes that more businesses, housing, and other amenities will attract families to start homes in her own life-long neighborhood.
“A lot of people have moved away,” she said, “but it’ll be nice to see people come back.”
The Elks, like many of the social clubs that used to be real anchors of their communities, are having a majority of their members mostly over 65. If young people are not brought into the social clubs, then the clubs will die out. The Elks could be a huge community leader working with young people to give them a sense of belonging and of pride. They could do all kinds of fundraising and social events and after school mentoring and recruit young people to help with seniors to create a bond between the young and the older members in the community, and to provide food drives and community cleanups and holiday parties at the senior centers and retirement homes and more. They could be role models guiding the community leaders of the future.