Thomas Breen photo
Artist, historian, and curator Rob Greenberg inside “Lost in New Haven.”
An itinerant installation of thousands of Elm City artifacts, memorabilia, and ephemera is on the move yet again as the local artist behind the sprawling collection prepares to pack it up — and potentially put it in storage — as he looks for yet another new home.
That collection is called Lost in New Haven, and is the brainchild and life’s passion of local artist and historian Robert Greenberg.
Outside 424 Grand Ave.
The collection, already booted once from a previous location, is currently installed in a roughly 3,700 square-foot warehouse at 424 Grand Ave. Greenberg told the Independent on a Thursday afternoon tour that he’ll likely have to move yet again come January.
That’s when his annual lease with the building’s owner is set to expire.
Inside “Lost in New Haven.”
The landlord, he said, doesn’t want to renew his lease — leaving him scrambling to find a new, even larger space that he can afford, that’s accessible to a diversity of New Haveners, and that can accommodate his ever-expanding collection of Sally’s pizza boxes, Bradley Smith Co. lollipop tins, New Haven Nighthawks hockey pucks, late 19th-century porcelain teacups, and early 20th-century New Haven police photographs. Among countless other preserved artifacts.
“To me, it’s a giant piece of art that’s constantly growing, constantly in flux,” he said. “This could end up in a storage unit and not be seen for a very long time.”
Hull’s lager, Cott cola, and other relics of New Haven beverage history at “Lost in New Haven.”
A 1964 AP photo of then-Yale President Kingman Brewster and Martin Luther King, Jr.
A New Haven native and local history devotee who attended Beecher School, Richard C. Lee High School, the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Greenberg moved his 5,000-plus piece collection to its current Fair Haven home after his father decided to sell the family’s ACME Furniture building at 33 Crown St. in late 2016. He had previously stored and displayed his collection in that building’s third and fourth floors.
Brimming with enthusiasm and pride as he talks about two decades of digging up, searching out, and collecting fragments of New Haven history, Greenberg said it took him over six months to clean up the Grand Avenue warehouse space – which, he said, has a rich history of its own, built in 1923 as the city’s first bus depot.
He said he vacuumed the ceiling three times, painted the walls twice, scrubbed the floors time and again, and replaced all the lighting with LED bulbs — all while carefully arranging his collection across a myriad of thematically-organized shelves and tables and desks littered throughout the cavernous warehouse space.
Contributed photo
Greenberg with a class of John Martinez School 4th graders.
Since October 2018, he said, he has given roughly 40 private tours of his collection. Visitors have ranged from John S. Martinez School 4th-graders to Connecticut Fund for the Environment members to Yale School of Architecture graduate students to City Wide Open Studios (CWOS) arts enthusiasts.
All the while, he has continued to add more his collection — through purchases on eBay, donations from New Haven collectors, and the occasional amateur archaeological dig at former New Haven manufacturing sites downtown and in Wooster Square.
He has also started video-recording interviews with New Haven artists and collectors as they drop off their own unique contributions to Greenberg’s local cultural menagerie. (See above for an interview with Maryann Ott.)
“This is an art installation,” he said. “I don’t call it a museum. It’s more of a cabinet of curiosities.”
Those “curiosities,” he insisted, offer a unique and engaging snapshot of what day-to-day life in New Haven has been like over the past two centuries.
A cigar box with a color illustration of the old Hyperion Theatre offers a rare glimpse into the interior of one of early 20th-century downtown New Haven’s more lavish entertainment palaces.
A “boneshaker” bicycle from the 1860s tells a story about early model alternative transit — and about the connection between bicycle wheel design and New Haven carriage manufacturers …
And a replica 1932 three-cent stamp featuring an august, revolutionary George Washington hung next to a picture of local artist Titus Kaphar’s 2016 oil-and-rusted-nail painting “Shadows of Liberty” underscores the wide range of relationships different New Haveners have had to that founding father over the years.
“The Lost in New Haven collection is an unparalleled teaching and learning experience about the city’s history,” Yale School of Architecture Associate Professor Elihu Rubin told the Independent by email.
“I have brought graduate and undergraduate students to view Rob’s artifacts, thematically arranged in evocative tableaus, and without fail the group is awe inspired. There is no substitute for the genuine article, the material legacy of the city’s development over time.
“New Haven’s industrial and commercial past comes alive. At a time when the local character of so many places is being threatened, and when ‘authenticity’ has become such a prized virtue, Lost in New Haven brings forward an acute sense of place.”
Inside the New Haven bike history display case.
Devil’s Bike Shop Co-Owner Matt Feiner agreed. He has brought bike tours to the Fair Haven space a number of times; riders are always amazed, Feiner reported. He said he also helped Greenberg buy the 1860s “boneshaker.”
“He brings a practicality to the approach of a museum that is more that just time and something old,” Feiner said about Greenberg. “It’s a sense of ownership with a sense of New Haven. It’s a sense of time gone by.”
“I call him New Haven’s Indiana Jones,” he continued. “Because he’s always saving great artifacts for the people so that the people can see them.”
Greenberg showing off an 1870s-era porcelain teapot he discovered during a recent State Street dig.
Greenberg said that he still doesn’t know where his collection will end up in the new year. He hasn’t made any money off of it so far, he said, and has relied on donations from local philanthropists, such as Laura Clarke and Roslyn and Jerry Meyer, as well as $15-per-person admission fees for visitors, discounted for larger groups, and waived for children, first responders, and military.
“I’m not a businessman,” he confessed. “I’m an artist.”
He does have his sights set on two potential locations — both as ambitious and difficult to imagine as his collection.
The original Anchor Bar sign.
For one, he’d like to relocate to the vacant, publicly-owned, 10,000 square-foot commercial space on the ground floor of the Crown Street Garage downtown.
The collection could be the foundation of a cultural museum and tourist hub, he said.
But he wants the city to give him the space for free, considering the free marketing he believes the museum would provide for New Haven.
“There has to be a way for the city to fund this,” he said, “as opposed to looking for another sneaker store or night club.”
Parking Authority Executive Director Doug Hausladen declined to comment on Greenberg’s request to have the space for free, deferring instead to Mayor-Elect Justin Elicker as to how the city wants to use the space.
Hausladen has previously said that the city parking authority plans to put the prime downtown parcel up for rent on the broader commercial real estate market and see which businesses bite.
A months-long public bidding process had teed up the space to be converted into a new music venue or theater — but both interested parties ultimately dropped their interest in the space, which is in need of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs.
New Haven police artifacts and images.
Elicker praised Greenberg’s collection and curatorial ambition, even as he declined to commit to giving the center-city commercial space away for free.
“I admire Rob and am deeply impressed with the collection of New Haven artifacts, memorabilia and history he has assembled,” he told the Independent. “More importantly, I believe his enthusiasm for the city is something the City of New Haven should look to support.
“Of course, our city has many financial challenges and it is difficult for us to lease property at no cost. But I would like to work with Rob to ensure his collection is accessible to the world. It is an important New Haven asset.”
Elm city candy history.
The other location he’s considering is a 21,000 square-foot empty industrial building on Hamilton Street that’s up for sale for $1.8 million, he said. In an ideal world, he said, he’d like the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History to purchase or lease the property and share the space with him as that museum prepares to shut down for three years of renovations.
With an uncertain future ahead, Greenberg said he’s interested in continuing to host tour groups at the Fair Haven space throughout December.
He’s also looking for volunteers to help with disassembling, cataloging, packing up, and moving his collection. He hopes to photograph every item in his collection as he clears the shelves so that he has a comprehensive survey of what and how much of New Haven history he has to offer.
“I can put this collection into a visual that will stimulate young minds and engage them,” he said. “This is our history.”
A photo in Greenberg’s office of Greenberg with then-Mayor Biagio DiLieto in 1980.
The looking question now is … where will that history go?
“I need help right now,” he said. “This collection has to move pretty damn quick.”
Anyone interested in booking a tour with or otherwise reaching out to Greenberg can contact him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). He also accepts donations through the Arts Council for Greater New Haven, which is the fiscal fiduciary for Lost in New Haven.