Exchange Place in downtown Waterbury CT in the early 1950s
Some downtown stores and the State Theater on East Main St. in 1954
These are just two of the hundreds of places my Time Machine visits on the cybertour of Waterbury in vintage images from the late 1800s to the 1970s on my Waterbury Time Machine website.
If you prefer to view vintage images of a particular area of Waterbury rather than take the entire tour, click on the appropriate link below.
Downtown * Around the Green * More Downtown * Uptown
tourists since 11/9/08
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Click on COMMENTS below to read some memories of Waterbury in the '50s, '60s, or '70s from the Website. Please post your memories of Waterbury in the Memories of Waterbury or Waterbury Neighborhoods post below.
My family came from New York and Quebec and settled in Waterbury around the turn of the century. They came to find work, to be close to their extended families, and to start a new life. First, my great grandfather Harry Behr brought his family from Brooklyn, New York. However, he moved back and years later in 1916, my grandfather Harry Behr Jr. and his new wife, my grandma, returned to Waterbury to raise their family. My grand dad Behr worked at Scovill’s for over thirty-five years. In 1920 my grandfather Louis LeClerc, raised in Anctonn Valle, Province, a small town in Quebec, and my grandma, raised in Windsor Ville, another small town in Quebec, settled in Waterbury to be close to their friends and family. They lived in the French section of the city, near the still-standing St. Anne’s Church. His first job in the city was at Oakville Pin, where he was employed by for over forty years.
ReplyDeleteMy mom and dad were both born in Waterbury. My dad grew up in the East End on Hamilton Avenue and then moved to Union Street; my mom lived on the corner of River Street and Baldwin Street, next to Haddad’s grocery store. Mrs. Haddad’s grandsons attended and graduated from St. Margaret’s-McTernan School, Brian and DJ Haddad (what a small world!). My dad attended Maloney and then Leavenworth and my mom attended St. Anne’s School and then Catholic High, where Sacred Heart High School is now located.
In 1951 the ultimate Waterburian, Sugar Ray Behr, was born into this city at St. Mary’s Hospital, and that's when history around here started to change. I lived on River Street for five years, attended St. Francis Xavier on Baldwin Street, and played in my yard near Pope’s Garage and the Mad River. Across the street Grandma Bonacassio lived; her house smelled like an Italian restaurant, sauce simmering on the pot belly stove, sausage, meatballs, mushrooms, pork sautéing, the aroma of garlic and spices made my eyes water. That was when I began to love Waterbury. Everyday Mama Bonacassio, who spoke only Italian, would let me eat homemade bread with sauce and cook me a bowl of homemade pasta that melted in my mouth. She would say, “Mangia, mangia! Eat, eat!” I would then go up the street and visit Mrs. Haddad, who would give me some Squirrels, Good & Plenty, Fire Balls, and Dots. She would talk to me in her native language, giving me a hug good-bye. Can you see why I love Waterbury?
In 1957 I moved to the Bucks Hill section of Waterbury, a project named Broadview Acres. What a place to live! I began to love Waterbury even more. In my court alone, there had to be fifty kids to hang with and just imagine… there had to be 100 of these courts: a lot of friends and a wonderland of adventures. These projects were located near farms with woods that went as far as the Waterville section of Waterbury. We climbed and caught snakes on Grey Stone Mountain. We rode in a raft on a nearby pond, imagining that we were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. We built forts, traveled on sleds down the hills that seem to never end, and rode three on a bike down North Main Street or Boyden Street, with no fear or apprehension. We played football, baseball, and/or basketball everyday; there was never a shortage of kids who wanted to compete.
I attended St. Anne’s School and I began to learn about the section of Waterbury that my family lived in when they first arrived. My grandpa, dad, and mom would show me their hang outs: the park where they first met and places they worked as kids. We hung out at Nardelli’s and Grenier’s. I hung out with some of my friends at the French Club on South Main Street, where my grand dad and dad were bartenders and taught me how to play cards.
At age fourteen, I left the projects and moved to our new home on South Elm Street. It was located a few yards from Catholic High and St. Anne’s School, where my sisters and brothers attended. I had to walk the farthest to Wilby High on Grove Street. It seemed my life always brought me back to the South End section of Waterbury. My neighbors were the Zappone family, whose grandchildren attended our school community.
I would walk downtown, go to Mid-town to shoot pool, walk a few feet and hang out at the Kitchen, a real-life Fonzy hangout. I met my future wife right outside as she was walking from Notre Dame Academy to catch a bus. Can you now see why I love Waterbury?
I had my first job at Michael’s Jewelers and my mom worked right across the street at Howland Hughes at the restaurant on the bottom floor. My mom worked for Mr. Paine, the owner, whose two grandchildren now attend our school community.
Downtown Waterbury was always alive; we had numerous stores, record shops, movie theaters, the State and Loew’s Poli (now the Palace Theatre), soda shops, dance studios, markets, and pizza shops, some that are still there today. We played cards on the Green where, in 1961, I saw the person whom I admired the most across the street at the Elton Hotel—President Kennedy. What a day that was! I remember saying to my dad, “Waterbury must be an important city if the President came for a visit.”
The city went through many changes in the 70’s. The Naugatuck Valley Mall was built, along with other big shopping centers, and the city lost its attractiveness. The city I loved began to lose its identity.
Wow,how well written,brought me back to earlier days when i roamed down town and sat on the benches waiting for the cr&l bus to hill st.good times.
DeleteIt’s not easy admitting in a crowd of people that you’re originally from Waterbury. People tend to give you that old, "My God, the poor guy" look without saying anything to your face, out of pity. Everybody knocks Waterbury. It has been called the armpit of Connecticut ... the noxiousness of the Naugatuck Valley ... the land where time stood still... the city where the crooked Irish politicians were eclipsed and replaced by the crooked Italian politicians. T. Frank "10 to 15" Hayes and Leary begot Joe Santopietro and Phil Giordano. The Waterbury Republican-American got a 1940 Pulitzer for graft stories which they still remind everybody of but did little else. The Brass City (Quid Aere Perennius) ran out of gas, brass and just about everything en masse. I feel like passing the hat with a sign, "Help a poor kid from Waterbury around the corner."
ReplyDeleteI lived for 14 years in the intellectual part of Waterbury, Washington Hill -- an area where men were men and so were half the women. A hotbed of Irish influence. Almost all of us went to St. Francis Xavier Church on Baldwin Street. I was one of the heathens in the public school, however. I went to religious instructions on Thursday afternoons, Saturday mornings and Sunday, after Mass. This is principally why I’m such a sterling fellow today. There were and still are nicknames: Bibber, Mudder, Gizzo, Bobbo, Buster, Happy, Neddy, Cabbage Head, Dogface, Horse, Packy, Tocko, Joe-Joe the Louse and other colorful sobriquets.
Out of towners once thought the only good things about Waterbury were the Jacques Theater during the hey day of "bump and grind" burlesque and Phil Becker’s on Bishop Street. A lot of folks still remember Nardelli’s on South Main Street, where you could get a 15 cent "grinder."
It’s tough being part of one of the three biggest lies in the world: 1. Money isn’t everything; 2. This won’t hurt at all, and 3.It doesn’t matter if you’re from Waterbury, God still loves you. Waterbury’s latitude is 42 degrees 30 minutes North, in line with Avigliano, Italy. It is between 215 and 965 feet above sea level and they don’t spend a lot of money on good snow plowing... God put it there - God will take it away eventually, a la Bridgeport’s former Mayor Jasper McLevy.
The first Mickey Mouse watch was made in Waterbury in 1933 under the Ingersoll name. It sold for $1.50. The town had a host of firsts: Girls Club in the U. S. (1864); can opener patent (1858); pewter buttons (1790); brass made by fusion of copper and zinc (1802); Unico Club (1922); regular monthly comic book "Famous Funnies" No. 1 (June 1934), worth over $10,000 today. George "The Mad Bomber" Metesky, was a Waterbury guy, as was Fyodor Fedorenko, a Nazi war criminal, the first to be extradited to Russia for trial and execution. Rosalind Russell, Jimmy Piersall, Roger Connor, Bob Crane, and John G. Rowland (yes, him!) were Waterburians.
I still have some pleasant memories of Waterbury and, though I’ve lived in Bristol CT for more than 40 years, I’ll always be considered as not a native here.
And then there is Father Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus. If memory serves me, there is a statue of him down by the old train station.
DeleteRadio was show business in the early 50s. We didn't have a TV set in 1951, and show business was everything. That and vaudeville. Downtown Waterbury had the Loew's Poli Palace Theater, which ran live stage shows on weekends following the movies. Eight Acts Daily: usually a musician, juggler, ventriloquist, comedian, singer, tap dancer, animal act, and magician. Sometimes even a band, like Horace Heidt and his Musical Knights. He actually had his own TV show, so I had to get his autograph. After that it became an obsession. Hartford's State Theater was the largest venue in the world to me, with over 2000 seats. I would beg and plead with my poor parents to drive every Sunday to Hartford for their Sunday super-show. They had real stars and we would see every one, and wait at the stage door with autograph book and pen in hand. I filled up two books with autographs of stars like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Carol Burnett.
ReplyDeleteThis was all very nice, but when I turned sixteen in 1953, Dad said, "It's time to go to work". He got me an after-school job that paid $35 a week at the Eastern Color Printing Company. I had heard that kids who worked at the Reymond Baking Company, which made Sunbeam Bread, were making twice as much as I was, so I asked Dad if it was OK to change jobs. He said "Sure, but remember, you're really going to work there". My first day there was the only day I ever really, really, worked for a living, sliding skids of dough into a walk-in, 450 degree oven, and scraping and cleaning huge tin mixing vats. I lasted four hours and quit. From that day on, I never had a "job". Sitting on one's ass in a comfortable radio station control room and playing records suddenly seemed to make sense no matter how much or how little one would get paid.
WBRY's Program Director Walter Howard, a former CBS Network announcer, had made me the unpaid host of Weekly High School Highlights, a chatty news and interview show with local school kids, when I joined the station in 1951at age fourteen. After I turned sixteen, I got paid $55 a week for hosting my own week-nightly Talk of the Town with Joe Mulhall from 9:00 to 11:00 PM.
Disc jockey shows followed throughout my high school years on each of Waterbury's three stations: WBRY, WATR, and WWCO. My greatest feat during that time was to arrange for actor Sal Mineo to come to Waterbury in 1955 to promote his movie Somebody up There Likes Me at the State Theater. Press and radio interviews were scheduled, and Julia Smith, the manager of the State Theater, bought a big ad in the Waterbury Republican & American newspapers in conjunction with the "premiere". MEET SAL MINEO IN PERSON! Sal and his family drove up from the Bronx on the day of the big event, and had a home-cooked meal at our house. Then we went to the radio stations, the newspaper office, and the movie house on East Main Street. Traffic was backed up for blocks as hundreds of folks, mostly teens, came to see the film and meet Sal in the lobby. The event was a huge success.
I left Waterbury after graduating from Sacred Heart High School, attended the School of Public Relations and Communications at Boston University, and returned in 1959. Little old WBRY had decided to cut back on CBS network programming and jump on the "personality disc jockeys" bandwagon. I became "Sweet Daddy" for a Saturday afternoon requests and dedications show with call-in LP record prize contests. I got the name from the song by The Storey Sisters that was on the flip side of their hit record "Bad Motorcycle".
My return to Waterbury radio was short lived, and I left WBRY for WHYN in Springfield MA in June 1960. WHYN general manager Zack Land, a real promoter, changed my on-air name to Ken Griffin, and Joe Mulhall / "Sweet Daddy" became part of 1950s Waterbury radio history.
When I was a boy growing up in Waterbury during the 1950s and '60s, the dining universe was narrow and pretty monochromatic. In downtown Waterbury- a busy, bustling place that was the center of my universe in those pre-McDonald's days- there were coffee shops, department-store lunch counters (Kresge's, Woolworth's, Howland-Hughes), one major cafeteria (Waldorf) and a handful of more colorful joints where adults could drop in for an okay hot meal and a highball.
ReplyDeleteEthnic options were very limited. There were a few good Italian restaurants, among which Diorio's and Bacco's are still around today, a couple of German spots (Drescher's remains in business downtown) and one Chinese restaurant, The China Inn, a den of mystery located down a flight of stairs off a raffish side street called Harrison Alley. The Elton Hotel on the Waterbury Green had a decent dining room, as did the nearby Waterbury Club. Fine, creative, chef-driven dining, as we think of it today, was basically unheard of. To my mind, a fancy restaurant was a place that served parfaits for dessert. If there was French cuisine within driving distance of Waterbury, I was unaware of it.
Not that I would have gone there to eat, anyway. With five children in the family, we really didn't dine out much. No one did- at least no one I knew. Our restaurant of choice on those rare instances when we did go out was a place called Litchfield Farm Shop on Watertown Avenue, one of a small local chain of dairy bar/restaurants that years later sold out to Friendly's. For more special occasions, we might go downtown to Diorio's. It had a wonderful warm and urbane atmosphere, with a long wooden bar, high-backed booths, a cigar case by the cash register and mustachioed waiters who could dazzle young diners by juggling plates and utensils before they laid them down on the crisp white napery.
Everybody shopped downtown in Waterbury in the 1950s. I frequented Woolworth's, Grieve, Bissett & Holland, Worth’s “Smiling Service“, Howland-Hughes, and The Handy Kitchen, a restaurant that had a sign that read "Order or leave." There was so much activity, the Green was always full of people and we used to see movies in the theaters. There was a Planter’s Peanut store and a man dressed like Mr. Peanut used to walk up and down the streets. It was viable, it was clean and it was safe. It is disappointing that you don't see the activity there anymore.
ReplyDeleteHowland-Hughes morphed from a five-floor department store carrying practically everything a family needed -- from rugs to pressure cooker gaskets to clothes and toys -- to a single-level "Made in Connecticut" store when the malls sucked out clientele. It wasn't any different in Hartford when the famed G.Fox department store closed. People didn't know where to meet Santa any longer.
The Rose Shop on South Main St. closed in the 1980s. More recently, it became the venue for another discount store, BB's Best Bargains, selling inexpensive gift items, housewares and clothing. It is merchandise that is appealing for the few customers who still shop downtown.
Fifty years ago there were 17 men's clothing stores downtown. There was Fitzgerald and Platt, there was Garston’s, there was Sullivan’s, there was Jones Morgan. In those days, everybody dressed up. Today, very few men dress in suits and shirts and ties. Attorneys are about the only ones who still dress conservatively and form a loyal client base for the men’s clothing business.
When some of the banks left, it was a big blow to downtown business, adding to the problems created by the popularity of malls with their free parking spots.
What caused downtown Waterbury’s demise in the 1970s? The demise of the brass industry? The construction of new public high schools? The Naugatuck Valley Mall? The answer is probably "all of the above".
ReplyDeleteThe massive brass mills which employed most of the residents began leaking employees like air from a punctured tire in the early '60s. Operations slowed to a crawl through the 1960s and 1970s, and finally shut down completely in the early 1980s.
All three public high schools were located near downtown in the 1950s and 1960s, filling downtown with youthful energy and exuberance every day after dismissal when the teenagers headed to The White Tower for some burgers, The Handy Kitchen for fries and a Coke, or Mattatuck Music to listen to some of the latest hit 45 rpm records in one of their listening booths (and maybe even buy one) before catching the bus home. Now Kennedy/Croft is in Town Plot, Wilby is in the Bucks Hill neighborhood, and Crosby is out east.
In the 1960s a former pig farm on the Wolcott town line was transformed into a spectacular regional mall, one of the first of its kind in New England. During the next twenty years Wolcott Road sprang to life with a series of strip malls and plazas and became the place to shop in Waterbury. Retail business moved outside the city core, but Waterbury was not unique in this regard, the pattern played itself out all across the country. When retail left, the people left. Downtown became best known for low income housing and as a center for social services.
I live in a leafy green suburb: Glastonbury CT. It's lovely, really, and I've no plans to move. But I was raised in a different Connecticut town, a dirtier, noisier one, and I can't forget her. My town was Waterbury.
ReplyDeleteWaterbury gave birth to the American brass industry and, later, officiated at its funeral. We raised John Rowland, our felonious former governor, and we've packed a few of our mayors off to prison. Waterbury knows jail: when the boys get out, there's a block party with red, white and blue balloons tied to the folding chairs, big foil trays of lasagna, and music, because somebody's cousin is in a band.
On a mid-spring Saturday in the early 1970s, I boarded the city bus with my friends, a pack of 12- and 13-year-olds in Wrangler jeans and Converse high-tops. It was our day to go downtown.
We headed for the back of the bus, put up our feet, lit our cigarettes and compared smoke rings. This bus was ours: We sat on torn vinyl seats, some patched with sticky, peeling duct tape, most scrawled with graffiti, lurid professions of love and hate in English and Spanish. The engine was loud and the bus stank of exhaust, a smell we loved.
The bus passed through the hills on its way downtown: Waterbury's hills that roll, not with apple orchards or pastures, but with hundreds of muted gray and beige three-family houses, great grids of neighbors anchored by big brick or cement blocks that were the schools. And the cross, too, was there; the huge cross of Holy Land USA rising up from the hill behind lower Baldwin Street, like a conductor with some sort of ethnic orchestra of steeples below: the French church, the Italian, the Polish, the Irish one "out East." There were others too, modest and tucked away, like the new Portuguese one and the storefront iglesias down on South Main.
One of us reached up to pull the frayed cord to signal our driver; here was our stop. We ground out our smokes on the dirty bus floor.
We made our way across the Green toward the bowling alley. The blotchy patina of the horse monument on the east side was constant, as was the low-level chaos playing out across the grass and benches: A few kids ran, trampling the paltry new growth of tulips and daffodils and throwing popcorn into mad flurries of pigeon wings. Three or four people slept, newspapers over their faces, on park benches. A couple of men, some staggering, drank from bottles dressed in brown paper bags. The bleached blond woman with the sad pockmarked face and crooked lipstick sat on a bench, filing her nails. And the feral-looking red-haired man we'd seen so many times was shouting and moving toward us now, trying to make eye contact. He wanted a dollar; he wanted salvation. Knowing we were in no position to provide him either, we moved, without any discussion, as a herd or a flock would instinctively move. We moved as one, avoiding his eyes and his battered hands. We moved away, and kept on going. We moved reflexively and without fear, or even a second thought.
So we went on to bowl a few frames at Seena's Duckpin Lanes. We could have taken a transfer bus to get up to the swankier Lakewood Lanes, but Seena's would do for us that day, with its cheap bowling and well-stocked and unsupervised cigarette machine. It was dim and dank inside, and smelled of the stale oil from the Fryolator. We came out of the alley surprised and disoriented to discover that it was still only early afternoon. We squinted and took deep breaths, like animals emerging from a dark burrow, adjusting to the presence of light and air.
Over on Bank Street, we stopped in at Howland-Hughes Department Store, which had an elevator with a uniformed operator. The operator, dressed in brown, had a stub where one of his right-hand fingers should have been. I loved the macabre. When he closed the accordion-like jaws of the inner gate I stared and wondered, as always, if he was injured here, in this very elevator, finger reluctantly offered as a sacrifice to his chosen profession. On darker days, I wondered, too, where the remains of the accident lay.
The Silas Bronson Library on Grand Street was next. The boys spent their time in the first floor periodicals section, fondling the worn pages of National Geographic that revealed to them exotic naked breasts from around the world.
We ordered pizza at Domenic's, a tiny and cramped inferno of a place. It had just a few tables, which were somehow always occupied, so we found room at the chest-high Formica counter. The wall behind the counter was mirrored, and we stood, using handfuls of cheap paper napkins to wick the oil from the tops of our slices, and watched ourselves eat.
The world was Catholic then, and our parents had stipulated that we were to attend the 4:15 vigil Mass at the Immaculate Conception Church, that vast marble and granite cathedral with ornate pillared statues and an impossibly high Sistine-esque ceiling. Marginally compliant, we arrived late, sat in the last pew, and left early, at Communion time. While there, we examined our purchases, fretted with buyer's remorse, told jokes, passed notes. We were noisy, but were only part of the din, the humming cacophony of this cavernous place. Around us, old Italian widows dressed in black fingered their rosary beads and murmured incessant Hail Marys, while schizophrenics in from the Green babbled their own incomprehensible word salad.
On the bus ride home, the spring sunlight was slanted, more golden, and the windows, we saw, were streaked and filthy. We were finally quiet; cigarettes and other contraband needed to be hidden. Later, in houses up and down the block, our parents asked what we'd done downtown. Our answers were, I'm sure, all the same: "Nothing."
So it's more than 30 years later and I am in my suburb, and I see my own children. Maybe I see yours, too. I see them in their Speedo swim goggles in the summer and I see them in their travel soccer uniforms in the fall. I see them wait for the school bus in their parents' cars because it is drizzling. I see how badly we want to sanitize their lives, and I know that my own two will never have a dirty bus ride. I see that, like most parents, I've wanted to give them everything. I'm disappointed, though, because I can't: I can't give them what I had.
I wonder then, if I am just sentimentalizing and romanticizing the dirt and the danger of my old city, because this is what we do. Maybe I am, but I see them, our children, and I think: How lucky. How very, very lucky I was.
You can post your memories of Waterbury in the ‘50s, ‘60s, or ‘70s in the COMMENTS for the Memories Of Waterbury or Waterbury Neighborhoods post on the main page. Click the Back button on your browser to return to there.
ReplyDeleteDuring the next twenty years Wolcott Road sprang to life with a series of strip malls and plazas and became the place to shop in Waterbury.
ReplyDelete___________________
Julie
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I began to love Waterbury even more. In my court alone, there had to be fifty kids to hang with and just imagine… there had to be 100 of these courts: a lot of friends and a wonderland of adventures.
ReplyDelete--
Jhon
You cannot go wrong on the best security systems
The Berkley Knight Drilland Drum corp save me Long Hill Road Waterbury
ReplyDeleteI REMEMBER ALL THE ABOVE AND ALSO HOW THEY WOULD BLOCK OFF THE STREETS FOR US TO DANCE.
ReplyDeleteWE HAD IT ALL. MARYANN
Also the chocolate shop a few doors up from the state theater, a great hangout after school.
DeleteDoes anyone remember the public bathrooms? I think they were in Harrison Alley. There was another hangout for high schoolers' that did not go to the Handy Kitchen. It was on East Main St, across from the State Theatre. Miller and Peck had two entrances, one on South Main and the other smaller one around the corner from the Lerner Shop.
ReplyDeleteWaterbury is not the best for some but is been ok to me. Is really where I've lived all my life. my new life now is been amazing in Waterbury. Because I moved from the bad
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone remember The Silver Moon bar. My dad and his friend worked their. Loved going there with him. He got me a stool, picked me up,sat me down and I proceeded to play the old fashioned bowling game. Then I would go to the back, up a few stairs and try to play the old piano. There was a Wurlitzer in the back too. Still have that. Won't let that go.These are very happy memories. I was around 6,7 yrs. Old, in the 60's, going downtown with my grandma, my mom, and my aunts. Having lunch at kresge's with grandma, having my first taste of Chinese at the China inn,down a side street with my aunt.visiting my sister at kavulas hair dressing school. It was bustling back then. Loved every minute of it. Miss those days.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather had a jewelry store back in the 40's and 50's over by sacred heart school. Not even sure what the name was. His name was Amedeo A. pelosi. Any help would be appreciated.
ReplyDeleteWas there a store in downtown Waterbury called Strisik’s? I bought a tea cup and saucer at a vintage sale and that stores label/seal was stuck on the bottom. I haven’t been able to find any information about the store. Thanks!
ReplyDelete