Emily Hays Photos
Al Proto: Grand was the Avenue of the Americas.
A vaudeville theater becomes a church. A church becomes a parole office. An integrated boys’ swim club becomes a swim-focused nonprofit.
A group of dedicated ethnic historians sketched out these transformations and more neighborhood lore in what will eventually become an official Grand Avenue tour.
“It really was the avenue of the Americas — Irish, Italians, Polish, African Americans,” recalled Alphonse Proto, who grew up on the street.
The tour of the neighborhood was led Friday by the Ethnic Heritage Center, which has existed since forming a coalition of existing ethnic history societies during the celebration of the city’s 350th birthday in 1988.
In the past few years, the group has led walking tours of Wooster Square, Downtown and Dixwell. Some of these tours have high school tour guides, who offer their own spins on the history to younger students.
The center has published “Walk New Haven” history guidebooks on each of the neighborhoods featured so far. Each of the five ethnic history societies that make up the center contribute places and oral histories to the project. The next “Walk New Haven” booklet will focus on Grand Avenue and will likely be ready by the fall.
Rhoda Zahler Samuel: Nice to be together at last.
Friday was the group’s first time meeting in-person in a year. Despite being completely vaccinated, everyone kept their masks on during the outdoor tour. (Click here to follow along a separate 2020 tour of the four-block stretch of Grand between Olive and Wallace Streets, prepared by a graduate student who dived deep into the area’s history as well.)
Rhoda Zahler Samuel started off the Friday tour outside Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop with the goals of the day: check whether they have listed the 24 historic sites in the correct order and learn from one another about whether they left any important sites out.
The retired city planner mentioned another goal further down the line for the project: When the city works towards revitalizing Grand Avenue, the planners and neighbors will know more about what came before the thoroughfare’s current state.
Courtesy of Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven
Kruger’s, before urban renewal.
The most glaring theme of the tour was how much has changed on Grand Avenue since the 1940s.
Empty space and parking lots stand in the place of former mom-and-pop shops founded by Jewish couples excluded from many factory jobs because of anti-Semitism.
The Kruger’s site now.
Kruger’s Furniture and Appliance was one of those family-owned stores, located at 907 Grand Ave. It was knocked down in the late 1960s and is now a parking lot.
Tenement-style buildings.
Couples often lived above their stores, Zahler Samuel said. Tenement buildings, like those pictured above, lined the blocks.
Alphonse Proto grew up in one of those tenements in the 1940s and 1950s. The building had no showers or bathtubs, so families signed their male children up to the Boys Club of New Haven at 31 Jefferson St. Proto would swim at the club and take his shower afterwards.
The Boys Club building now houses the swim, recreation and youth leadership nonprofit, LEAP.
Compared to the tenements, the nearby federally funded, low-income housing at Farnam Courts seemed like the height of luxury. The public housing had indoor plumbing and heat in both the units and hallways. Proto remembers playing cards in the halls of Farnam Courts to stay warm during the winter.
Both the Boys Club and Farnam Courts were racially integrated. African-American families and children lived and played alongside immigrant families like Proto’s.
The landscape started to change in the 1950s with the decline of the economic engine of the neighborhood, the New Haven Clock Company. The state built its section of Interstate 91 through Wooster Square and Fair Haven, and New Haven knocked down shops and tenements in the name of urban renewal.
Courtesy of Joe Taylor
St. Patrick’s Church.
Families like Proto’s moved out to New Haven suburbs in search of a better life. At first, they returned to the neighborhood on Sundays to attend services at St. Patrick’s Church. The church was one of the oldest in New Haven and had existed in the neighborhood since 1851. However, over time, the church lost its membership and sold the land to the city in 1966.
Proto pointed out the most visible remnant of the demolished old church: a tree stump next to what is now New Haven Parole and Community Services at 620 Grand Ave.
Farnam Courts, meanwhile, grew rundown. The housing authority has been demolishing and rebuilding it as a new community called Mill River Crossing.
The group chatted about other changes to the landscape as they walked. The vaudeville San Carlino Theater is now the Asamblea De Iglesias Pentecostales De Jesucristo.
Courtesy of Shirley Lumpkin Gray, Lucille Mapp
Lillian Benford Lumpkin (left); A band plays at Lillian’s Paradise (right).
A pile of logs marked 137 Wallace St, where Lillian Benford Lumpkin (pictured above) once founded the successful bar, restaurant and jazz performance venue, Lillian’s Paradise.
The partial remains of the New Haven Clock Company.
After passing the old Clock Company, the group wound their way back to Lucibello’s to order cannoli and the seashell-shaped sfogliatelle.
Stepping into Lucibello’s was like stepping back in time. Sugar-dusted treats caught the light in their glass display cases. Cashiers tied up boxes of pastries for the tour guides with red and white twine.
Unlike most places on the tour of transformations, the pastry shop settled onto Grand Avenue after displacement from urban renewal. It has passed from father to son and stayed mostly the same.
“Generations of people have come here. They don’t want us to change much,” said Lucibello’s owner Peter Faggio.
Those interested in learning more can order the Walk New Haven books online or check them out from the New Haven Free Public Library.
Alphonse Proto has collected oral histories about Grand Avenue in the 1940s and 1950s into his own book, titled “It Was Grand!”
Walk New Haven helps to preserve history of the neighborhoods that would otherwise be lost when the generation that told stories about the olden days in that neighborhood pass away. Lately there has been a lot of driving by a new building or empty lot and either remembering or wondering what had been previously in that spot. New Haven has a rich history of the many generations of people from all sorts of backgrounds who lived, played and worked in this city. I'm glad there is a group of people who are dedicated to preserving those memories for everyone.