Photos Capture The Upper State That Was

Jerry stands with his hand on his hip, a cigar angled improbably out of his mouth. He’s wearing a hat from another time. The shop behind him is from another time, too, an older New Haven that’s increasingly hard to catch a glimpse of. The photograph is accompanied by a quote from Jerry, addressed to the photographer: ​“Say, you ain’t Polish, are ya? John here said you might be Polish. You’re Italian, ain’t ya? You look Italian.… Lithuanian? Romanian? Well, at least you ain’t a Jew. Say, you ain’t Jewish, are ya? Old John, he and I just like to kid around. What are you anyway?”

That image, and that conversation, have been preserved in time thanks to ​“Upper State Street 1978: At the Height of Its Decline,” a fascinating photography show from Karen Klugman running now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through Aug. 21.

The show offers a brilliant look back at the Upper State Street that was, offering perspective of just how much the neighborhood has changed — and what parts of it haven’t.

The title of Klugman’s show is apt due to the uncanny timing of her arrival on the block over four decades ago.

“In the fall of 1978, when I photographed the shops and people on State Street in New Haven, I had no idea that plans were in place to revitalize the area and that in a few years, the funky Old Country atmosphere captured on my film would be history,” Klugman writes in an accompanying essay.

“In fact, at the same time that I was composing pictures of the locals against backdrops of peeling paint and second-hand merchandise, a group of neighbors and property owners who were alarmed by deteriorating buildings and a spike in crime were forming the Upper State Street Association to hasten the execution of the city’s languishing redevelopment plans. Only six years later, in 1984, the restoration of the area’s original architectural heritage and vibrant mix of small businesses was honored by the National Register of Historic Places and, as a consequence, my photographs became documents of the Upper State Street Historic District.”

Thus, she writes, ​“in the long and illustrious history of State Street, the late 1970s would have the distinction of being the height of its decline.”

Klugman didn’t see it that way at first. She arrived in New Haven in the 1970s with her husband, who was doing a medical residency at Yale. She got a job at Yale’s computer center and lived on Avon Street. The New Haven she encountered was ​“rundown but not dangerous,” she said, and she quickly developed an affection for the city.

On Upper State Street, she writes in the accompanying essay, ​“most of the businesses were antique stores and self-described junk shops. Browsing their combined merchandise was like sifting through an extravagant rummage sale of American history. One could find an ornate early American mahogany sideboard or a used plastic dish drain, maybe even in the same store … Furniture with homemade price tags and card tables full of bargain items were set up outside not only to attract customers, but to relieve the crowding inside the stores, where secondhand goods were literally piling up with no place to go.”

But, she adds, ​“in spite of the overflowing inventory, Upper State Street had the feel of a neigborhood as much as a commercial district. The shopkeepers lived nearby or sometimes in houses attached the the back of their shops. Many businesses had been in their families for generations. A few had institutional names such as the New Haven Antique Center, Parrish House Antiques, or AARS Yafa Treasures (Appraisal, Auction, and Restoration Services), but most were known simply by the names of their owners: Anthony’s, Charles’, Earl’s, Edward’s, Janice’s, Jerry’s, Joe’s, Johnnie’s, Mosca’s, Peck’s, Patti’s, and Rhea’s. The hodgepodge of chairs lined up on the sidewalk were often occupied by neighborhood regulars, making them seem more like porch furniture than retail items.”

In 1977 Klugman bought a camera with an interest in learning how to use it. With the pictures she took of Upper State Street in 1978, ​“I was practicing shooting black and white.”

Klugman chose that neighborhood in part because it struck a nerve with her own personal history. She had grown up in western Pennsylvania in a Rusyn family. ​“Today we are White people, but they considered themselves outsiders, and everybody who had money were called ​‘rich people.’ ” She grew up on a farm and ​“I did not know one Black person, had never interacted with a Black person until I got to school in Philadelphia.” The business owners on Upper State Street ​“reminded me of my relatives … I knew them, I understood them. I totally understood their M.O. being about money — every little penny they could get. Not that they were even saying that so much. It’s just how they were living. They had to show up to work every day, sit outside their junk shops or antique shops, and they had to get every bit of business they could. But they weren’t crabby about it. They felt like a community. They were all in the same boat together. They were immigrants who were working hard for the American Dream.”

Klugman’s eye was drawn to some of the frictions between the shopkeepers’ aspirations and the reality that surrounded them. A billboard in the neighborhood advertised a booklet that promised enough information in it about the American economic system to pave a road to prosperity. That ad was tagged by three graffiti artists. Most of the windows in the building behind it were broken.

But as a photographer, she mostly ​“wanted a place where there was activity — people around, and a little bit of a challenge. Even back then, I always liked this idea that I now call intimacy at short notice, where you can connect with a person or a happening — and then it’s gone.”

But the impression of it remains, and for Klugman, that could be captured in a photograph.

“That happened a lot on this street. You’d hang out, and even passersby would stop and chat for a little bit.” She was also there for more momentous occasions on the street: a house burning down, an arrest.

At the time, Klugman didn’t have the sense that she was documenting anything. ​“I thought what I was doing was sharing what I see. Could I tell someone else what I see? The idea of history never really occurred to me.” Which is why the photographs of Upper State Street sat in a box for 43 years, while Klugman embarked on a photography career that took her all over the country and landed her pieces in the Museum of Modern Art, Wesleyan University, and other places.

Going through her old photographs was a ​“pandemic activity,” Klugman said.

“I’m clearing things out. I’m getting older, and I don’t want to have to have my kids go through them when I die,” she said with a wry laugh. She found the negatives and thought ​“I can’t throw these out,” so she scanned them and printed them, and set up the show at City Gallery.

She has so far been gratified by the response.

“I’ve had art shows, and I don’t consider this art,” she said. ​“I considered it just documentary.” 

That has been mirrored in the audience coming into the gallery to see the photos, many of whom haven’t been to the gallery before. It has drawn people who grew up in New Haven and want to see a glimpse of their own pasts.

Granddaughters of John DeRose, whose beloved grocery store appears in the photographs, have contacted Klugman. ​“One guy came in here — I think he’s the guy who really runs the neighborhood these days — he knew everybody. He knew so much,” she said, including the identities of some of the graffiti artists who had tagged the aforementioned billboard.

She has heard stories that ​“are taking me farther into this project, in a way,” she said.“That’s exactly the audience I wanted.”

Meanwhile, the photographs also reflect just how much Upper State Street has changed since 1978. Today, she remarked, ​“there are some pretty chichi restaurants. People use the word ​‘gentrified’ ” to describe it.” As far as she knows, all the businesses she caught in her photographs are long gone.

But other aspects of it haven’t changed. The initial renewal grants given to the storeowners shortly after Klugman took her pictures were intended to be used to renovate spaces, not tear them down. ​“Many of these people felt that it wasn’t enough money for them to do anything,” Klugman said, ​“so they ended up closing down.” That included DeRose, who moved to Orange Street.

Others did renovate. But ​“the structure of the buildings remained so much that you can find the buildings” based on the photographs.

Many storefronts haven’t changed very much. Klugman identified one alleyway this year by the wear and tear on the bricks as they appeared in her photographs from decades ago.

Klugman found another constant.

“A few months ago, prior to this ago, I went around to introduce myself” to the current business owners, to explain to them that their storefronts would be appearing in her exhibit. ​“I thought I was going to go around to the whole street. But everyone was so welcoming and chatty that I only made it to three businesses. People were just the same. It seemed to have the same spirit,” she said. There was a thread, she noticed, ​“of community,” still stretching back to the past. She has been pleased, she said, by ​“how many people feel a connection to this street.”

“Upper State Street 1978: At the Height of Its Decline” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., tnrough Aug. 21. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.