Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez Photo
Ed Cherry, modernist architect, strolled his old neighborhood, gazing at the once-new urban renewal era buildings.
“Dixwell could have been saved,” he reflected on the time the “Model City” sacrificed history for a promise of prosperity that never materialized — a promise he helped design.
Behind him trailed a small crowd of mostly white folks. They had signed up for a walking tour of Dixwell’s modernist architecture sponsored by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Many of them were from New Haven, but they had the vibe of tourists in an unknown city.
The walk took place last week. Cherry (at center in above photo) and a fellow tour guide— Chris Wigren, from the New Haven Preservation Trust — shared insights about the neighborhood’s history, providing an assessment of the successes and failures of urban renewal. New Haven earned the “Model City” nickname back then, in the 1950s and ‘60s, for undertaking the nation’s most intensive experiment in razing slums, constructing new buildings and public spaces, and developing anti-poverty social programs.
The strollers last week repeatedly ran into the conflict between lofty goals and concrete reality that marked that era, and the underlying tensions that remain today.
Curious, skeptical Dixwell residents approached the group several times during the walk, questioning in sometimes hostile tones what the visitors were up to. They did so in the same way some people in Dixwell questioned what planners were up to a half century ago — when New Haven undertook the radical experiment of attempting to eradicate poverty through architecture, when a flood of federal and foundation money enabled planners to raze stretches of neighborhoods like Dixwell and rebuild them.
A Strip Mall
Ed Cherry’s tour began late last Wednesday afternoon at Varick AME Church on Dixwell Avenue, a historic site that was once part of the Underground Railroad — and of Cherry’s youth.
“I came to New Haven in 1942, at the height of the depression of the fabric of the city,” the architect said as the group walked away from the parish he attended as a child.
“It was the beginning of World War II,” he continued. “My parents came up from North Carolina to work in Winchester [rifle factory], as most people did who came from the south. When we came to New Haven we found conditions deplorable, relative to the residential fabric of the city.”
The architect spoke with the unassuming authority of those who can call their memory history. Before him stood Dixwell Plaza, a lonely strip of parking space and rundown stores. The sight wouldn’t have been out of place in an economically struggling suburb anywhere in America. Here it was in the heart of a populous city.
“This was a neighborhood,” said Cherry, as he glanced at the strip mall. “But I don’t think you can call it that anymore.”
Across the street, on the other hand, Monterey Place, a new neighborhood of public-housing apartments and lawns, spreads toward Winchester Avenue, replacing the failed Elm Haven high-rises that once dominated the area.
Cherry’s knowledge of the Dixwell history is unique. Not only did he grow up in the tight social fabric of the old neighborhood, he also witnessed its decay — and tried to fix it. Cherry participated actively in urban renewal, consulting city planners as they rebuilt large sections of the town, and designing many of the era’s flagship buildings.
“The philosophy of urban renewal was to move cars in and out of the city efficiently,” he said on the walk. Ironically, tour members struggled to hear him above the noise of passing trucks and buses. “The Dixwell project was designed by architecture stars, and architecture stars sometimes don’t think about people.”
Not that conditions were particularly nice before the star architects got to work. In Cherry’s words, the area now occupied by the strip mall was “a slum.”
The slum, however, was full of life.
“There was a series of stores here,” said Cherry. “There was a movie house down the street, a small neighborhood theater. There were seven drug stores, and a pool hall. Down in the corner you see St. Martin’s Church. In the ‘40s, that was a neighborhood police station.”
There were also several liquor stores, “obviously,” and a number of “nice black-owned restaurants, sit-down places where you could take the family.”
All that is gone, replaced by a pizza parlor, a laundromat, and a branch of the New Haven public library. Several storefronts are vacant. The decline of the neighborhood started before urban renewal; whether urban renewal hastened it became a matter of contention.
Wingren explained that during the early phases of the Model City era, federal money for revitalizing the city would pay for demolition and rebuilding, but not for rehabilitation. Old buildings, many of them houses modified to accommodate retail establishments, were mercilessly torn down. A team of downtown city planners then decided what to put in their place — without consulting the neighbors, the guides claimed.
“It didn’t work,” Cherry said, a note of sadness in his voice. “I don’t think that people are doing too well in those stores.”
Cherry speaks to the community activist who asked why nobody had informed her of the tour.
The group was getting ready to cross the street when a middle-aged woman approached. She demanded a copy of the handout Cherry had given the audience.
“What’s this all about?” asked the woman, who identified herself as a “community activist.”
Members of the group sought to explain to her the purpose of the tour. That made her angrier.
“Nobody told us about any of this,” she said. “You can’t do this without telling us!”
Her words drew a clear line between the second and first person plural — “you” and “us.”
Cherry approached her and tried to calm her down.
“And who are you?” she asked brusquely.
The architect convinced her that the group meant no ill. The activist left.
Fortresses & A Ghost Square
Cherry, Wigren at Stewart Plaza.
The tour then walked to Daniel Stewart Plaza — the paved court, flanked on both sides by irregular concrete buildings, connecting two venerable Dixwell institutions, the now-shuttered Dixwell Community “Q” House and the Dixwell Congregational Church.
Besides the group, nobody was present in the plaza. The wind was blowing; the whole place felt a little haunted.
“Brutalism,” said Wigren in reference to the architectural style of the plaza and much of new Haven’s urban renewal, “comes for the French word ‘brute,’ which means something like ‘strong,’ or ‘imposing.’ The problem is that doesn’t come through in translation.”
“Buildings are designed to reflect their time,” Cherry chipped in. “Now, the ‘60s, for some of you youngsters, was a pretty violent time in the cities. They may seem like plain buildings to you, but they are designed to protect the users.”
The Congregational Church and the Q House indeed loom strong and imposing. They look a little bit like castles, all high walls and small windows. The church even has a moat, as if prepared to resist a prolonged siege.
Despite their modern appearance — which itself now seems dated — the institutions behind the fortress-like structures have long histories. The Congregational Church was founded a in the early 19th century to provide a place for black people to worship. The Q House was founded in 1924.
“Dixwell House was the result of liberal-minded folks, who were concerned about what young people had to do in their spare time,” said Cherry. “This was the only place black people my age had to go for physical activity and socializing.”
“The city was very segregated, very racist,” he went on. “There were specifically black outlets, and Dixwell House was one. It was a place where young black people were nurtured. I learned to play tennis at the Dixwell House — I learned to shoot pool in a good environment.”
Cherry got a chance to give back to his beloved community center in 1967, when he was asked to design a new building for the Q House. The building was to be part of the new Daniel Stewart Plaza, urban renewal’s attempt at giving Dixwell a public square. It would be flanked by two pillars of black community culture: the church and the youth center.
The new Q House was supposed to be more than the “YMCA for black people” that it had once been. It would be a community hub, with half the building dedicated to the youth center and the other half to social services. The city’s many agencies had substations there, so that neighbors didn’t have to walk downtown to access everything the government had to offer.
Cherry’s building was large enough to accommodate those functions. It represented the vanguard of architecture at the time. The neighbors, however, didn’t like it very much, he said.
“It’s a building daring you to tread on it, but if you get inside you see open spaces,” said Cherry. “This design was not appreciated by the people of the neighborhood, who were used to the old Dixwell House. They could never figure out why there wasn’t a gym in the building.”
Nevertheless, the Q House grew on the community. People came to love it almost as much as Cherry loved the old one. Then, a decade ago, something went wrong.
“Let’s say that something happened, politically, locally, socially,” Cherry said of the closing of the house.
The center shut down. Board infighting, complaints from financial backers, and accusations of political meddling left the organization running it unable to keep going. Cherry’s building now stands empty and in disrepair, like a post-Perestroika Soviet relic.
Dixwell neighbors never stopped fighting to reopen the house; so far their efforts have been unsuccessful. Click here to read about ongoing efforts to reopen the Q and here for to read about an effort to open a community center in the nearby Goffe Street Armory..
Cherry remains a modernist at heart. His pragmatism trumps whatever attachment he could have for his old building.
“I think the Goffe Street armory holds many opportunities for full use of the building for community purposes,” he said when asked about a recent punlic hearing at which two dissenters suggested focusing on the Q House instead of the armory. “I don’t think that the Dixwell House as it is designed could accommodate the myriad of uses that a neighborhood like Dixwell would require for its youth. It’s a question of which design works best to solve the problem.”
Dennis Farmer.
The architect was in the middle of his defense of the armory project when a man in a black cowboy hat approached the group. He introduced himself as Dennis Farmer, neighbor and former participant at Hill Cooperative Youth Services, “the Hill’s equivalent of the Q House.” He asked for the microphone, which Cherry dutifully gave to him.
“I just want to say that it’s a tragedy, what happened to the Q House,” he said calmly. “The place was slapped around politically until it couldn’t get back up.”
Farmer then left as quickly as he had come.
As the tour departed the plaza, Cherry looked back.
“It used to be full of people,” he said.
“Don’t Take Away My Neighborhood”
The tour proceeded down Dixwell Avenue. Along the way, Cherry pointed out the buildings that used to be located where modernist structures now stand. He remembered jazz clubs, record shops, pool halls “where you could get a graduate education after learning to shoot at the Q house,” restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmacies — all of them gone.
“There used to be Chinese cleaners over there,” he said smiling. “I know we don’t use those terms anymore, but back then that’s what you’d say. ‘I’m taking my shirts to the Chinaman.’ Times have changed, and that’s good.”
When the group reached the corner of Dixwell and Webster, Cherry pointed to the Monterey Place development, where Elm Haven used to be. He recalled the days when the now-infamous housing project was “the place to live for black people” before it degenerated into one of the city’s poorest, most crime-ridden areas.
As the tour came to an end, the group stopped by the Helene Grant Elementary School, where young children were dancing to a steel drum band. Several kids were riding around the school’s courtyard in undersized bicycles. They looked at the group from a distance, with suspicious eyes.
The school, Wigren told the group, was the work of another star architect: John Johansen, member of a legendary modernist clique known as the Harvard Five. The irregular structure of the school had few windows, most of them narrow bands near the ceiling — meant to let no distractions in, only light.
The tour went behind the school and ended where it started: at the parking lot behind Dixwell Plaza. The kids in the undersized bikes followed from afar.
Cherry then offered an assessment of urban renewal.
“We made mistakes,” he said. “Living conditions in the neighborhood are a lot better than they were, so I’m not saying that urban renewal was bad. But we learn as we grow.”
As the architect spoke, one of the kids in the bicycles came near.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Don’t take away my neighborhood, please!”
The group tired to ignore him and listen to Wigren, who was highlighting the importance of learning from the past. He said that modernism has become a part of the city’s history, and that its buildings should be protected with the same zeal that the New Haven Preservation Trust applies to safeguarding New Haven’s colonial legacy.
“A lot of the urban renewal buildings are starting to show sings of age,” he said. “They need major repairs. People sometimes complain that they’re ugly modern stuff, that we should just tear them down and start over. But the lesson of urban renewal is precisely that it’s not as easy as it sounds.”
The kids kept shouting as he spoke. The air grew tense, with the tour group doing its best to keep calm and ignore the shouts. The bikers then got closer. One of them pedaled as fast as he could towards the group, turning away at the very last possible moment with screeching tires. A young woman, who he had almost hit, couldn’t suppress a small scream.
“Do you work for Yale?” asked another of the kids. “I want to work for Yale too!”
An elderly woman on the tour walked to the kids and spoke to them for a few minutes. When she came back, she reported on her conversation.
“I explained to them that this is a part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas,” she said. “I invited them to come listen to the music tonight. I’m glad that they keep such a close watch on their neighborhood.”
“Please don’t turn my community into Yale!” the kids kept yelling.
The tour group clapped for Cherry and Wigren, and then quickly dispersed.