nothin Stolen Car Clips Historic Building | New Haven Independent

Stolen Car Clips Historic Building

Allan Appel Photo

Karin Patriquin.

Karin Patriquin, the principal of Patriquin Architects in Fair Haven, located in the historic Kings Block building on the corner of Grand Avenue and Front Street, has lately spent a lot of time on behalf of her clients in front of the Historic District Commission.

Now she’ll be going before the commissioners herself to present plans to repair damage caused when a stolen car fishtailed through the Grand Avenue and Front Street intersection and took a piece of the western corner of the building’s storefront.

Workman from United Illuminating tying down a conduit that was loosened in the crash.

The incident, causing damage to her structure — the oldest surviving Federalist commercial building in New Haven — occurred before 8 a.m. Monday, Patriquin said, around the time one of her colleagues, Paolo Campos, came to work.

He had entered by the side door on Front Street and had not noticed the damage, or the crashed vehicle, which were on the Grand Avenue side.

He, however, was not the one to call the police.

A neighbor had called. By the time Patriquin came in, alerted by a phone call at 8:13 a.m., the police, fire marshal, and other officials were at the scene.

The vehicle had shattered and then clipped off a big hunk of the glass and wood front enclosure on the western side of the front door, The brick walls were left intact.

No one was hurt, Patriquin said, but the breeze is now briskly blowing in through shattered glass and broken two-by-fours.

Patriquin said the vehicle ended up against the tall wooden utility pole on the sidewalk slightly west of the building , but there was no driver in it.

Police were looking for the driver, who fled the scene. The car was believed to be stolen.

She said she already has a call in to the chair of the Historic District Commission in order to get on the agenda as soon as possible. We’ll shore it up, then secure, and then decide” on steps to repair and replace, she said.

The damaged section is perhaps half of the age of the venerable Kings Block Building, whose facade reads 1816.” It is still considered historic and in the Quinnipiac District. We’ll replace it exactly in kind, with details,” she said.

Patriquin was also nonchalant about implications of the incident. It’s an urban site,” she said.

Patriquin did note, however, that Campos and her other colleagues frequently hear cars whooshing by, grinding brakes, and straining tires, at speeds inappropriate for the smallish intersection at the western entryway of the Grand Avenue Bridge, over which her building looks.

Something else to think about for the Christmas holidays,” she said, stoically.

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