100 Years Later, Eugene Fargeorge’s Fair Haven Survives, & Thrives

Relatives and friends of Eugene B. Fargeorge are gathering to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday Saturday, and one of their activities will be a clean-up of the Quinnipiac Meadows/Eugene B. Fargeorge Preserve, which was established by the New Haven Land Trust in 1987 and named in his honor.

Caroline Fargeorge, one of the 15 children of Eugene (Gene) Fargeorge and his wife Jirina, said this service activity is appropriate to pay tribute to one of Fair Haven’s most civic-minded citizens of the past century. 

Although the lifelong resident of Fair Haven died at age 63 in 1985, almost 40 years ago, Gene is still remembered as a community leader who stood up to city government to preserve the historical integrity of Fair Haven, much of its unique architecture, and especially the beautiful Grand Avenue Bridge. 

His story is in many ways Fair Haven’s story — a tribute to the perseverance of citizens who loved their neighborhood, appreciated its history, and fought successfully to preserve it for future generations.

Gene Fargeorge was born in New Haven in 1922, and his family moved to Fair Haven when he was just a year old. He lived in and celebrated Fair Haven for the rest of his life except when he left to attend Providence College and to fight in World War II. It was while he was in Czechoslovakia that he met Jirina.

Fargeorge is remembered as a Renaissance man by his family and friends. He created art, played music, but his strongest passion was for history. He pursued a graduate degree in history at Fairfield University. His real work as a historian came in sharing his lifelong love and appreciation for the beauty and long history of Fair Haven.

By the early 1970s, urban renewal had already wreaked havoc on New Haven for two decades. In the first wave, the town razed the buildings along downtown’s Oak Street, a vibrant community, with the intention to make space available for new development. Aside from a high-speed mini-connector to I‑95/I‑91, much of the land remained vacant for decades, and current efforts are underway to reunite the neighborhoods on either side of the highway.

Fair Haven, and its diverse neighborhoods, were slated to be in the next wave of renewal. New Haven’s ​“1969 Fair Haven Renewal and Redevelopment Plan” would have torn down the existing 1898 Grand Avenue bridge to build the ​“New Grand Avenue Bridge,” a four-lane concrete span rising high enough in the air to allow boats to pass underneath.

To achieve the bridge’s height would have necessitated razing buildings along Grand from the river back to Atwater Street. The graceful iron bridge of today would have disappeared, to be replaced with a structure with all the charm of the current Ferry Street Bridge. The areas in black in the above graphic show the proposed new bridge and the approaches to it.

The 1969 plan also reveals all the streets (dark gray) where existing Fair Haven buildings would be removed and ​“the areas donated to the Project.”

“Without Eugene Fargeorge and the people he motivated to come together, Fair Haven would not be what it is today,” said Gene Fargeorge’s friend and lifelong Fair Havener Charlie Salerno.

Salerno formed a bond with Gene Fargeorge over their mutual love of the historic architecture of Fair Haven, which had started when each of them was a boy.

“The neighborhoods surrounding the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven are a time capsule and surprisingly one of the only remaining early 19th Century residential areas still intact in a nearly 400-year-old city. This is due in part to a concentration of residents rising up and pushing back in the 1970s against the ongoing urban renewal movement as its focus landed on Fair Haven,” noted Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, director of the photo archives at the New Haven Museum.

Fair Haven’s story has been tied to the biologically lush Quinnipiac River for centuries. Native Americans spent the summers along these banks, fishing, oystering, and farming. After the invasion of the European settlers, a vibrant oystering community grew up along the banks, with entire families spending their days harvesting and processing oysters in their homes along the shoreline. Successive waves of immigrants have called Fair Haven home since its early days.

A commercial area in Fair Haven included businesses that supplied the oyster trade with boats, ropes, kegs, and oyster traders. The 1816 King’s Block building, which still stands at Front and Grand, is one of the oldest commercial buildings in New Haven and housed a wide range of venues including coffee shops, drug stores, hotel rooms, bars, and perhaps even a brothel. On the opposite corner, the 1885 structure that housed the Warner Hardware store also still stands. Both of these buildings would have been removed in the 1969 redevelopment plan.

The Quinnipiac became increasingly polluted by sewage and industrial waste in the 1800s, leading to a decline in oysters, but the river’s condition also spurred the state’s first clean-water legislation in 1886. It wasn’t until federal clean-water legislation was passed in the early 1970s that the river really started to improve.

It took a person like Eugene Fargeorge, with a keen imagination, to see Fair Haven’s beauty in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than revere its waterways, as is common in many municipalities, New Haven allowed businesses like the Schiavone scrap yard, which was located where the Quinnipiac River Park can be found today, to dominate the waterfront. 

“It was difficult to see that you lived in a great place when the city allowed that scrapyard to be there,” recalled Caroline Fargeorge. Many of Fair Haven’s houses and businesses had also fallen into neglect and disrepair.

In a 1981 New York Times article, local historian Doris B. Townshend, author of the 1976 book Fair Haven: A Journey Through Time, said, with great understatement, ​“The district is not high class.” At the time of her book’s publication, she anticipated further degradation to the area, such as a plan to put overhead power lines across the river from Grand Avenue to Fair Haven Heights.

However, the last chapter of Townshend’s book also pointed to a new surge of activism taking place in the community. The earlier Oak Street redevelopment project happened without the community having any say in its own destiny. In Fair Haven, people were beginning to ask questions about the proposed changes and to demand answers from the City of New Haven.

Charlie Salerno remembered this all coming to a head when people in the neighborhood saw the bulldozers coming to tear down the Pequot Plaza, which stood at the corner of East Pearl Street and Grand Avenue. The photo of Pequot Drugs shows a sign saying, ​“Must vacate due to redevelopment.”

“They were knocking down the Pequot. A bunch of guys went over there and got in front of the bulldozers,” Charlie Salerno recalled.

“Then they had a big meeting at Fair Haven Junior High School. They had the contractors, engineers, all the bigwigs. They had drawings of what it would look like. There were a lot of very smart people from the community who asked questions the city couldn’t answer.” 

Salerno remembered that these actions and the meetings were always attended by a diverse group of citizens of all ages, ethnicities, and economic levels.

Caroline Fargeorge, who has continued her father’s interest in local history, said her father knew that on the day the bulldozer first came to tear down the buildings, they didn’t have the correct permits; but they were able to succeed with the demolition at a later time.

Gene Fargeorge then initiated an action far more effective than blocking bulldozers in saving buildings: He and others worked to have the area along the Quinnipiac River designated a historic district, which would permanently protect the buildings. He formed and headed the Fair Haven Preservation and Historical Society.

Two years earlier, at the time of the Bicentennial, Fargeorge and his fellow Fair Haven enthusiasts had started Fair Haven Day, a multifaceted celebration that included parades, exhibitions, history lectures, entertainers, and races of ​“sharpies.” These small flat-bottomed sailboats, which were invented in New Haven, were agile and perfect for oystering; their speed made them fun to race.

Gene Fargeorge loved the sharpies. He used their image on the covers he drew for the Fair Haven Day commemorative booklets.

Along with allowing community members the opportunity to enjoy time with each other, Fair Haven Days sent the signal to the entire city that the citizens of this village within New Haven cared about where they lived and wanted to preserve their historic structures.

Beginning in 1978, there was activity happening on all fronts: to create a historic district, to convince the city to back down on plans for the ​“New Grand Avenue Bridge,” and to curb other urban renewal plans in the area.

A series of articles from the New Haven Register shows the activists’ progress over the next 18 months:

• Jan. 25, 1978: ​“A new neighborhood thrust is underway to prevent construction of a large bridge over the Quinnipiac.”

• Feb. 23, 1978: ​“Fair Haven [property-owners] okay historic district.”

• Mar. 5, 1978: ​“Plans are advancing to replace the 82-year-old Grand Avenue Bridge with a four-lane span.”

• Aug. 8, 1978: ​“The Quinnipiac River Historic District came into existence Monday on a vote of the New Haven Aldermen.”

• Mar. 9, 1979: ​“Mayor Logue announced he will comply with neighborhood wishes for a smaller, less obtrusive Grand Avenue Bridge.”

In the end, the Grand Avenue Bridge underwent a restoration in the 1980s but retained its original design and materials. In 1984, the Quinnipiac River District was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

State Sen. Martin Looney, also a Fair Haven native and a friend of Eugene Fargeorge, called him ​“a visionary who came along at the right time to help lead the preservation of historic Fair Haven. He understood the promise of the neighborhood, the promise of the river, and saw both the value of both the area’s past as well as its potential for a vibrant future.”

Gene Fargeorge, who in his professional life owned the Knightsbridge Company, a sheet metal and HVAC wholesaler, also possessed considerable skills as a builder. He renovated the home at 32 Perkins where he and Jirina raised their family, and he started buying and renovating dilapidated houses on Front Street and Grand Avenue, some of which are still owned by his children.

It was while he was working on one of these houses that he had a heart attack and died in 1985. He was ​“doing what he loved to do,” said daughter Caroline.

As the family prepared for Gene’s 100th birthday celebration, she also spoke about how thrilled he would be to see the Fair Haven of 2022, especially with the cleaner water, a return to oystering, and thriving businesses and neighborhoods.

Some of the natural beauty of the area will be forever preserved in the New Haven Land Trust’s 35-acre Quinnipiac Meadows/Eugene B. Fargeorge Preserve.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, whose long association with the New Haven Land Trust includes serving as its leader, spoke of how Fargeorge ​“appreciated the value of this natural asset at a time when many others did not, and New Haven is a more beautiful, livable place thanks to his efforts. On the anniversary of what would have been his 100th birthday, that’s a legacy worth remembering and one that will live on for generations to come.” 

It is fitting that Gene Fargeorge’s 100th birthday also sees the bridge he helped preserve receiving ongoing recognition and praise. After an 18-month restoration project and a change to a new light green color (voted on by local residents), the community celebrated the Grand Avenue Bridge’s reopening in January 2022.

In June, the New Haven Preservation Trust (NHPT) gave its 2022 Landmark Award to the City of New Haven and the designers, engineers, and contractors who carried out the Grand Avenue Bridge restoration.

At the awards ceremony, NHPT Board of Directors member Channing Harris recounted the actions of the 1970s: ​“Local citizens rose up, protested, formed committees, and worked with the government. The end result is we are able to prove restoration can work, it can be economical, and it retains the natural and cultural heritage that has attracted so many people” to Fair Haven. Eugene Fargeorge would have been proud.