Creating a Suburban Ghetto: Public Housing at New

Haven's West Rock, 1945-1979

ADAM WOLKOFF
Iti March 2004, the Housing Authotity of New Haven, Connecticut demolished
Rockview Terrace, a severely distressed low-income housing project on the fringes
of the city. Piles of broken appliances and concrete staircases ascending nowhere
were all that remained of this low-rise two-hundred unit development. Meanwhile,
the Authority secured a grant to evacuate a neighboring project. Brookside, in anticipation of its planned destruction. These projects, together known as West Rock,
were built after World War II, and have beeti a well-hidden blight on the city's
landscape for the past quarter of a century.' Cut off from the adjacent suburb of
Hamden by a high metal fence, and at the end of a wooded, winding road four miles
from the center of this small city. West Rock appears to have had none of the conveniences of urban life, and a wider share of its dangers. Yet the records of New
Haven's postwar mayors and its Housing Authority, contemporary newspapers, and
the memories of past residents recall a better place.^ The development has meant
different things to different people, but it was not designed, as other projects certainly were, to be the pocket of poverty and political powerlessness that it later
became.^
Public housing has been a scourge of inner-cities for decades and has come to
represent a range of urban pathologies."^ Yet in the 1950s, West Rock offered qualified New Haven residents a viable and popular alternative to homeownership and
private rentals. In the midst of a postwar housing crisis, and under pressure from
local labor unions, veterans' organizations, and affordable housing advocates. Mayor
William C. Celentano grudgingly cooperated with the Housing Authority to build
these units. Located on farmland along the city's border. West Rock provided a
middle-class standard of living to both the working poor (including African-American migrants attracted to the city's war industries) and veterans eager to begin their
postwar dreams. Based on a loose combination of modernist and garden city design
Adam Wolkoff graduated from Columbia University in 2004 and currently lives in his
hometown ofWoodbridge, Connecticut. This article won Columbia's Chanler Historical
Prize for best senior thesis on American civil government. The author expresses his
gratitude for the help and support of Prof. Zachary Schrag, Prof. Elizabeth Blackmar,
Maureen Novak of HANH, Katrina Rouse, Phil Weitzman, and his parents, Dr. Alan and
Elaine Wolkoff.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY M

57

principles, it functioned as both a suburban-style development in a bucolic setting

and a public housing project located within city limits. In contrast to our contemporary assumption of public housing as a place of last resort, it was a racially integrated
rental community with a mixed-income population.
But was this experiment sustainable, or even necessary, in the long run? After
all. West Rock was built at the federal public housing program's most pivotal moment, and also at a critical juncture in the history of American cities. During the
1950s and 1960s, many public housing projects shifted from being community assets
and symbols of upward mobility to becoming sites of blight and severe poverty. This
change occurred at the same time that a long-term pattern of social, political, and
economic de-concentration, which political scientist and New Haven historian Douglas Rae has called "the end of urbanism," had unraveled many central cities.-^ Built at
the beginning of urbanism's end. West Rock tested whether or not public housing
could continue to be an attractive option for the middle class seeking the benefits of
suburbia.
The answer was no. By 1968, when Mayor Richard C. Lee, distraught over the
shortcomings of his ambitious postwar urban renewal program, investigated the operations of New Haven's failing Housing Authority, West Rock had changed from an
economically and racially diverse community to an African-American ghetto. This
transition shifted the meaning of the project's landscape. As a former director of
New Haven's Housing Authority, Robert A. Solomon, writes, "[t]he racist overtones
of selecting such an isolated site seem obvious."*' The suburban location, once a sign
of success for its tenants, now highlighted the separation the city had tnade from its
poor.
As the dominant feature of life in the project, isolation had both positive and
negative consequences for West Rock when it was a working-class development, but
it was disastrous when the project became a welfare island. The planners of West
Rock were aware of the potential social and economic costs of isolation, and. while
Mayor Celentano opposed secluding the project (and giving away the city-owned
farmland for free) political concerns motivated him to accept the Authority's proposal. Important questions went unanswered in the planning process. leaving the relationship of the project to the broader region uncertain. No one, from mayors to the
Housing Authority, to its tenants and to its neighbors in New Haven and suburban
Hamden. had a common definition of the project's function. Was it a temporary
shelter, or a permanent home for the working-class? Was it an acceptable part of
New Haven's postwar sprawl, or an intrusion into the suburban landscape? With
City Hall and the Housing Authority ambivalent about their suburban development,
and Hamden's homeowners in arms about the project in their backyards, tenant leaders negotiated this debate by establishing standards of conduct for their neighborhood. Geographic, social and political isolation motivated their activism, but also
allowed it to flourish.
But the success of West Rock, the satellite, always depended on the central city
and its schools, shopping, mass transportation, and most importantly, its employment

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opportunities. As a consequence. West Rock was poorly equipped to deal with the
city's decentralization, which had accelerated in the 1960s. With unskilled factory
jobs, the backbone of the project, abandoning the city, the once solidly blue-collar
project split apart. The most successful tenants, who faced pressure from the Housing Authority to leave their subsidized units, found that the rents they paid at West
Rock were often not competitive with the benefits of joining a private market that
had grown more flexible as suburban development expanded in the postwar decades.
The tenants who left were also the ones who had the resources and skills to adapt to
the new economy. The African-Americans who replaced them were recent migrants
without the same opportunities to succeed. The Housing Authority, acknowledging
its role as a landlord of last resort, expanded its social services and relaxed its paternalistic regulations in the interest of community development. But this was a baseless offering: because of weak tenant selection policies, residents now had less
control over their project just as a new generation of tenants on welfare replaced the
first generation of working poor. To save the project, argued West Rock's remaining
leaders, they needed increased social services and more power. But as federal and
state governments abandoned welfare spending in the 1970s, and stagflation increased costs for the Housing Authority, these cries for help went unanswered.
Thus the story of West Rock traces how one American city fumbled in its efforts
to adapt to the postwar period. Built with the best of intentions, but constructed
safely apart from any New Havener's backyard, it was a permanent solution to a
temporary housing crisis. The myopia of West Rock's planners only became evident
in the 1960s, as the outlines of a real urban crisis, driven by the decline of manufacturing and resulting in poverty, joblessness, and racial isolation, transformed this
suburban enclave into a ghetto.
1.

THE ORIGINS OF W E S T ROCK:

"We are in the midst of a disaster. Not as spectacular as a flood or fire - not as quickly over as
an earthquake. But a disa.sler which strikes at the hean of tbe American lainily, and at the heart
of the American city." Citizens' Housing Council of Greater New Haven. Inc.. March
1949)^"The city must consider the housing problem in relationship to all other urgently needed
municipal improvements. . ." (Mayor William C. Celentano of New Haven. November 28,

After World War II, New Haven did not have enough quality affordable housing
to support the needs of returning veterans and their growing families. This problem
was exacerbated by the influx of workers who had migrated to the city to work in its
war industries and had no intention of leaving at the conflict's end. New Havenites
wondered whether this crisis was a temporary undersupply that the market could
address on its own, or whether the government would have to intervene in the real
estate market to spur new construction.
Undoubtedly, the private sector had failed to supply new housing or to maintain
existing neighborhoods, ln the spring of 1946, 2,500 families were looking for hous-

CONNECTICUT HISTORY ^

59

ing, while only ninety-three permits for new family units had been issued, and fourteen of them were for third floor attics converted into apanments. In part, this
neglect refiected a national drop in construction during the Depression and the war
years.^ Yet the most significant factor in the decline of housing starts and renovations in the city was institutional red-lining, as almost all of New Haven's workingclass neighborhoods were assigned undesirable C or D ratings by the New Deal's
Home Owners" Loan Corporation in the 1930s. By codifying social prejudices into
real estate values, these surveys steered mortgage money away from economically
and racially diverse neighborhoods and towards investments in more homogenous
areas, thereby accelerating urban decay and middle-class fiight from cities.'** The
Community Development Committee of the New England Council, a regional planning commission, recognized the problem of disinvestment in their 1944 report on
post-war housing: "Where business prospects are uncertain, there will be little building no matter how great the need may be to improve local housing standards." Conversely, the Committee warned cities like New Haven that if they failed to supply
workers with adequate housing, they risked losing employment to rival regions in
other parts of the country.''
While the New England Council suggested that city governments would have to
expand their role in the housing market to attract and preserve industry, a contemporary analysis by Roy Wenzlick & Co., sponsored by the New Haven Chamber of
Commerce, discounted the need for publicly-assisted housing. Citing long-term
trends in regional decentralization of population and manufacturing employment
from the city, it predicted that the housing crisis would abate by the end of the decade. The analysts argued that the city was merely facing "a landlord's market"
which would "loosen gradually" until January 1947, "the assumed first year of
peace." Wenzlick & Co. believed that New Haven would lose 2.2 percent of its
present population by 1950, for a total of 157,000 people, and that the city's "satellite
towns" would grow by 16.1 percent. While it accepted suburbanization of people
and industry as inevitable, Wenzlick & Co. doubted that New Haven's manufacturing plants would flee to the South or West. Unlike the New England Council, Wenzlick & Co.'s report was unabashedly opposed to public housing and proposed that
rent subsidies would be a better altemative for helping the poor seek better living
conditions. The report argued that public housing skewed real estate by artificially
infiating rents at the bottom of the market and by rewarding the poor at the expense
of the middle-class. "This is like the govemment selling new cars at the price of
jalopies to the selected few who cannot afford to buy new cars. It provides common
labor with better new housing at a lower price than skilled labor pays for used housing," As representatives of the business community, Wenzlick & Co. perceived public housing to be a political maneuver that benefited a small class of citizens to the
detriment of others.'Some of Wenzlick & Co.'s conclusions were incorrect in the short-term. The
war did not last until 1947, of course, and New Haven's war industries, such as the
Winchester Repeating Arms plant, continued to attract migrant workers to the city,
many of whom were African-Americans traveling north in search of a better life.

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

Limited to the city's worst housing stock, black newcomers crowded into the most
dilapidated sections of the city. According to the Housing Authority's 1948 Annual
Report, seven thousand families in the city were still living in unsound conditions.'^
Yet Wenzlick & Co.'s analysis of the political implications of public housing
was keen. Broader influences, such as discriminatory lending and federal incentives
for suburban construction, combined with a decades-long decentralization process
from the city, meant that new housing was not being built in New Haven. The
Federal government aggravated these deficiencies by sponsoring inexpensive mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) so that a wider range of citizens could afford to purchase new homes in
the suburbs. While an increasing number of middle-class families were able to take
advantage of this unprecedented opportunity, the working-class continued to compete
for a limited supply of low-cost good housing within the city's borders. Thus, in
"urbanism's last gasp," many of New Haven's poor and ill-housed citizens turned to
City Hall for help, and they expected the mayor to answer their demands.'"*
Perhaps City Hall was the wrong place to look for results. Like many contemporary mayors, William C. Celentano had a narrow set of assumptions about the role of
city govemment. Best known for being the last Republican mayor in New Haven's
history and the first Italian to hold that office, he was the city's part-time executive
from 1945 to 1953, splitting his time between City Hall and his prominent funeral
home. Political scientist Douglas Rae has characterized Celentano as a "perfectly
decent, ethical, and presentable mayor" who committed himself to providing the
highest level of city services to the people of New Haven. The problem with
Celentano's philosophy of govemment, Rae argues, was that in a period of rapid
urban change, his style "would seem a remarkable abdication of responsibility." According to Raymond Wolfinger, another student of New Haven politics, Celentano's
highest political aspiration was to be mayor, so he was "seldom given to bold ventures" that could threaten his office. In his "calculus of rewards," Celentano "did not
seem to feel that the returns from innovation would outweigh the risks of opposition
from some affected interest or from the Register," the outspoken local newspaper.'^
In comparison to his longtime rival and eventual successor. Democrat Richard C.
Lee, Celentano was a meek and unresponsive leader. But this contrast is unfair.
Celentano referenced an older tradition of politics, pre-dating both World Wars,
whose currency was reciprocity, not revolution. From studies such as Robert A.
Dahl's Who Governs? (1961), we know that the power structure of New Haven was
diffuse in Celentano's time; the mayor may have embodied city authority, but
thousands of other interests made the city function and set the direction of public
policy, from city bureaucracies to labor unions to the business elite.'^ As mayor of
New Haven during a period of intense partisanship (only ethnic voting saved
Celentano in three hotly contested elections with Lee). Celentano needed to juggle
the demands of all these interests to stay in power. Though he believed that City
Hall should iimit itself to providing necessary services, like roads, schools, and patronage jobs to constituents, he discovered that building public housing could also

CONNECTICUT HISTORY M

61

provide a popular, and fiscally practicable, city service. Conversely, he found that
choosing not to build housing couid compromi.se his authority over the city. In negotiating this balance, Celentano became the most important agent in the construction
of West Rock.
Beginning his term of office at the end of the war, Celentano recognized the
problem of accommodating returning veterans to the city and sought ways to make
City Hall a visible part of the solution.'"' But no govemment answer to the housing
crisis was possible without the cooperation of the Housing Authority of New Haven
(HANH). Following the passage of the Housing Act of 1937, New Haven reformers
had established one of the nation's first public housing authorities. They believed
that slum clearance, combined with new housing, would improve the morality and
health of the poor and the aesthetic appearance of the city. With the support of
business leaders, Yale University, and City Hall, HANH participated in the city's
first large-scale pre-war urban redevelopment projects. Elm Haven and Farnam
Courts, and built Quinnipiac Terrace on vacant land. To accommodate defense
workers, HANH built the 300-unit West Hills Defense Housing Project on the westem end of the city. At war's end, HANH used state-guaranteed bonds as part of
Connecticut's 1947 moderate-income housing legislation to build the city's first
moderate-income housing project, McConaughey Terrace, which housed three hundred veterans' families in the vicinity of West Hills.'^
As a city agency funded largely by the federal government, and thus fiscally
independent of the city. HANH operated in tension with the mayor's office, and
Celentano maneuvered, with limited success, to either circumvent the Authority or
control it in his efforts to address the housing crisis. The new mayor had no appointees on its Board of Commissioners, so his leverage with HANH was limited. The
Housing Authority even refused personal requests to shelter party loyalists.'^
Initially, the mayor supposed that he could establish an interim housing program
with direct responsibility to City Hall. He asked his legal staff to locate means by
which the city could build new dwelling units that would receive the same state
benefits, such as tax rebates, as a public housing authority was entitled to receive.
With state aid he created the Office of Emergency Housing, which sheltered veterans
and their families in barracks-style shelters until the city declared these units substandard and demolished them in 1954. But to make a permanent mark on the presumed
housing shortage. Celentano had to cooperate with HANH, both because it was the
only city agency with access to federal housing subsidies and also because as one of
the city's most visible and active agencies it was good at public relations.^o And
they needed the mayor: only the city government had the power and resources to
appropriate land for a new project and to build the infrastructure supporting it.
While the mayor and the Housing Authority agreed that something had to be
done to alleviate the housing shortage, they could not agree on whether action should
be taken to solve the long-term problem of housing the poor, or the immediate crisis
facing middle-income veterans who lacked sufficient options for their growing families. This debate was typical of a broader dilemma facing the liberal state after

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LEGEND
Conn 4-1

Elm Haven

Conn 4-7

Elm Haven Extension

Conn 4-3

Quinnipiac Terrace

MR-2

McCorowghy Terroce

Conn 4-4

Farnam Courts

MR-35

Brooks i d *

Conn 4-6

Rockview

Conn 6101

West Hills

A map of Ihe Aulhorily's public housing developments. Notice Ihe cluslering of projects in the
northwest comer of the city. This concentration angered Westville homeowners, who protested the
construction of further development in their backyards during the planning phases of West Rock
(Source: The Housing Authority of New Haven, Annual Report (New Haven: 1953)

World War II. At a time when funding for public housing was limited, would the
city and Housing Authority continue their New Deal crusade against the slums to
create new housing opportunities for the poor, or would they devote their energies
toward building suburban-style housing for upwardly-mobile veterans impatient to
begin their postwar American Dream?
In the initial years after the war this question was moot; without significant financing from the state and federal govemments large-scale public housing was impossible to build. Nevertheless, New Havenites took sides in the debate and pressed
the local govemment for action. On one hand, organizations such as the New Haven
Veterans Council and the Central Labor Council of the city favored the construction

CONNECTICUT HISTORY 1^

63

of moderate-income units as a means of rewarding the sacrifices of soldiers and their

families. On the other. New Deal reformers known as "housers" organized the Citizens' Housing Council of Greater New Haven to publicize the plight ofthe poor and
to urge the construction of affordable public housing.-'
In balancing both sides, Celentano favored constmcting low-income housing and
was ambivalent about the moderate-rental program. In principle, he believed that the
govemment should limit housing assistance to the poorest citizens. On the back of a
January 1948 memorandum describing the Authority's plans for moderate-income
McConaughy Terrace, Celentano penciled his concems about the proposal. He worried that their proposed rent scheme ($60-70 per month) was too high in comparison
with neighboring communities. He thought the construction methods were too expensive and that the rental prices were "below the level of existing rents" in the city,
thereby putting low-income taxpayers in the position of subsidizing the homes of
wealthier citizens.-- "City cannot afford to put in money into a project that just a few
people would benefit by it." He acknowledged, however, that not acting on the
state's moderate rental legislation would put him at a disadvantage in future elections. "This might be political dynamite for Dems, after comparing other cities +
what has been done." These fears undoubtedly propelled him to expand the responsibilities of his Special Committee on Moderate Rental Housing to find sites on which
to build more state-financed projects. By the end of January they identified 100
acres of the city's Springside Fann as the best location for a moderate income
development.^-'
As his Committee developed plans for a new project, Celentano was occupied
with lobbying state officials to expand their moderate income program and to include
financing for low-income units in the legislation. In April 1948, Govemor James C.
Shannon hesitated to act on Celentano's request, arguing that a national moderate
housing program would provide such funding in the near future.-'* Celentano would
have to wait a year, in fact; in January 1949, Shannon was replaced by Democrat
Chester Bowies, an outspoken New Dealer who was more amenable to Celentano's
plan.-5 Celentano thanked the govemor for supporting moderate rental housing, but
also reminded him of the need for low-income units. After months of debate, on
June 8, 1949 Bowles pushed a compromise through the State Legislature which enabled the financing of 6,500 moderately priced rentals and 3,000 low-cost homes
available for purchase. He promised Celentano that the new legislation could reduce
rents by $7-11 a month below the previous moderate rental program.^''
Bowles's bill had no allocation for low-income housing (a fifty-fifty moderate/
low income plan had failed to pass the legislature in March 1949)2"^ and so Celentano
joined other mayors in asking Congress to pass national legislation to fund its construction. "The city of New Haven is urgently in need of a large number of lowrental units," he wrote as part of an appeal by the United States Conference of Mayors. "This can be achieved by the passage of a housing and slum-clearance bill."
The Housing Act of 1949 passed, and by August of that year HANH had already

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

Tco't
CITT

PIAK

NEW HAVEK

oil

CDMMISSinil/D

1 HILt

ct>XNEininiiT/1."T.

A map identifying Springside Farm. (Source: Celetitano MSS, Box XIX. FolderA-2)

applied to the Public Housing Administration to reserve a preliminary loan for 800
units of low-rent public housing.^^
Within months, legislation providing both middle and low income housing settled the debate between the veterans and labor unions and the "housers." The federal
government promised "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every
American family...," by financing both public housing and private development and
the state filled a niche within this system of entitlements. According to its director,
the Connecticut State Housing Authority was "unique among state housing programs

CONNECTICUT HISTORY ^

65

in the nation" in establishing a moderate-rental housing program geared to help families with incomes too high for federally-subsidized homes but too low to afford "decent and comfortable" homes built by the private sector.-'' HANH now had two
strategies for solving the housing crisis and looked to the city for help in securing
sites for new projects.
One possibility was Springside Farm, a notch of hilly, swampy land in the northwestern corner of New Haven, sandwiched between West Rock Ridge State Park and
the border with the suburb of Hamden. Four miles from the city's center, the area
had long been the site of public institutions. The city acquired 257 acres of this land
from Orville Selden in 1882 to construct a work farm for the poor and indigent. "It is
a home in the fullest sense of the word, so far as an institution can possess home-like
qualities, and has robbed 'the poorhouse' of much of its former terror," wrote a tum
of the century guide to Nevy Haven. As part of this "patemal govemment on a small
scale," the 358 inmates of the "model" Springside Home cultivated a third of the
farm's acreage.-''^
Because most of this city-owned land was undeveloped in the 1940s, the Housing Authority wanted Mayor Celentano and the Board of Aldermen to donate a suitable tract at West Rock for the location of a new housing project. Though both the
City Plan Commission and the Mayor were wary of the fiscal and social costs of the
site's isolation, the vocal demand for new housing and the opposition of the community to projects near existing neighborhoods convinced Celentano that Springside
was the best site available for development.
Aside from its institutional function and its proximity to the park drive that
curved up the cliffs of West Rock Ridge State Park, the city had little connection to
this space. As the architect of Brookside and Rockview reported, "This particular
area is pretty much isolated with regard to the City of New Haven and probably
economically would be more closely related to the Town of Hamden."-" The land
was only accessible by car or by a mile walk from the bus stop in the Westville
neighborhood along a country road with no sidewalks. To build a sustainable community here, the mayor's aides estimated, the city would have to invest at least
$220,000. In addition to donating the land for the site, and developing sewers, lighting, and roadways through the development, the city would be responsible for building new schools, playgrounds, and shopping facilities, and for ensuring adequate bus
service to the isolated neighborhood. The city would also have to destroy a profitable piggery on the site that consumed about one-fifth of the garbage collected in New
Haven.^^
Nevertheless, Celentano and the Housing Authority had many reasons to support
this location for a new project. Lacking the resources and the political will to engage
in large scale urban redevelopment, vacant land was their simplest option for locating
new housing. Yet tracts of open space large enough to accommodate hundreds of
households were a rare commodity in built-over places like New Haven, where "the
central city housing authority can only gaze fondly at greener pastures beyond the
city line and then resume scouring city limits for possible sites."^^ In November

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E CONNECTICUT HISTORY

1949, the City Plan Conrmiission studied this problem for the mayor and concluded
that only two sites in the city were topographically feasible and affordable for largescale development: the Springside Farm and the level acreage known as the Famham
tract in the West Hills neighborhood.^'' (See figure 3).
Based on its analysis, the City Plan Commission favored building housing on the
Farnham site, rather than Springside. The Commission argued that Springside was
too far from the city to support a densely-populated neighborhood and that public
housing built there would be a hindrance to the area's predicted suburban development. Instead, "The Famham site would provide the opportunity to integrate a moderate rental housing project into existing community areas rather than isolating now a
nucleus group of 300 houses at the periphery of the city as at Springside."^^ While
the Commission acknowledged that the Farnham land was privately held, unlike Springside, it maintained that the cost of buying this farm land would be more than
offset by the savings to the city of building in an area proximate to existing
infrastructure.
The City Plan Commission's alternative analysis provided the Mayor with ammunition to bargain with HANH for a better deal on the Springside land, which he
was not eager to give away. "As you undoubtedly know, the City Plan Commission
is charged with the duty, among other things, to determine the best use of areas
consonant with a comprehensive overall plan for the City of New Haven," he wrote
to HANH Chairman Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow, a professor of public health and a
founder of the Housing Authority. "Consequently, all recommendations from this
Commission must be given serious consideration." ^^ The mayor's reassessment of
the project's location angered Winslow, who tersely reminded Celentano that "liln
requesting the City to deed enough of the unused land at Springside for a moderaterental project, the Authority did not intend to imply an invitation to the City and its
officials to choose other project sites in its stead." On November 28. Winslow called
Celentano's office to offer an ultimatum: "if city wants to give Springside site o.k.
otherwise we will go ahead with other ways."^' Celentano called Winslow's bluff,
responding on the same day with an outright rejection of HANH's plan. "The city
must consider the housing problem in relationship to all other urgently needed municipal improvements," he argued. The proposed units would have to wait.^^
From this nadir in their negotiations, how and why did Celentano and HANH
build not one, but two projects on the disputed site? Essentially, the mayor's conception of the public interest changed during the course of their conflict. From the
beginning of their association, Celentano believed that the Housing Authority was a
special interest which was demanding too much of the city's resources in developing
the proposed units. While HANH was concerned with cutting costs to ensure the
lowest possible rents for its tenants, Celentano doubted that the marginal savings for
renters would make up for the city's investment in the isolated neighborhood.
Yet Celentano failed to reckon how polarizing an issue public housing was to
both its friends and enemies. By appearing to oppose public housing he threatened to
lose the favor of its proponents, who now represented a diverse coalition, from

CONNECTICUT HISTORY #

67

newly-arrived African-American munitions workers to white blue-collar veterans.

As he once predicted, the Democrats used his ambivalence over the location of the
moderate-rental project to attack him, and nearly defeat him, in the November mayoral elections.-^^ In late October 1949, the Chairman ofthe State Housing Authority
tipped off Celentano's opponent, Richard C. Lee, about the mayor's inability to settle
the location of the moderate rental project. Only a few days before the election. Lee
sent out a press release blasting the mayor. "If we had action a year ago, instead of
too little and too late just a few weeks ago, these homes could have been erected and
occupied by this time." Lee claimed that if the "fumbling and bumbling Mayor and
his patronage ridden administration" did not select a site and hire an architect by
December 1st the State Housing Authority would take away the $4,871,000 originally allocated for the project."*^
Obviously, Lee did not sympathize with the pressure Celentano faced as he
sought the most expedient answer to the problem of locating new housing projects.
The mayor wanted to save the city money and also allow public housing residents to
live closer to the city's center. But his proposals alienated the Housing Authority
and the residents of Westville, a streetcar neighborhood in the northwest comer of
the city which opposed the construction of more public housing in their backyards.
West Hills, a Lanham Act project built to house war workers, and McConaughey
Terrace, a moderate rental development built in 1948, had brought six hundred subsidized housing units to this suburban part of New Haven. (See figure 1). After the
City Plan Commission proposed building an additional 100 units of low-income
housing on a piece of farmland on Valley Street in early 1950, neighboring Westville
residents sent hundreds of petitions of protest to the tnayor, the Board of Aldermen,
and the Federal Housing Administration."*' Given this opposition, Springside's isolation, once considered a burden for the city's infrastructure and social landscape, suddenly seemed like an asset to the mayor.
Within months, the outlines of the projects at West Rock were settled. In March
1950, almost a year after the state expanded its moderate-rental law, Celentano and
Winslow agreed to "friendly condemnation" proceedings over a portion of the Springside tract on which to build 300 moderately priced units; to save face, the mayor
forced HANH to pay fair market value for the land. By June, the City Plan Commission, citing the angry opposition of Westville residents, reversed its earlier opinion
and supported the location of the 100 (later 200) units of low-income housing on the
Springside land adjacent to the proposed moderate-rental project; it was better to
concentrate both projects in one area, they reasoned, than to face a planning battle on
multiple fronts. On July 10, 1950, Celentano asked the Board of Aldermen to approve the sale of another section of Springside to the Housing Authority to build
those 200 low cost apartments. With federal funding contingent on clear development plans, the mayor viewed the planning of these units as an "emergency" situation, and reported to the Board that "tejveryone interested is of the opinion that time
is of the essence in going forward with this program."^^

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

.Morris Cove

Political scientist Douglas Rae calls these nelghbortioods New Haven's "intemal suburbs." (Source:
Douglas Rae, City (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2003), 139.

For the rest of his life, even after Brookside and Rockview became ghettos.
Mayor Celentano insisted that the projects built under his administration helped alleviate a critical shortage of housing in the city."*-^ In the abstract, Celentano favored a
housing program that would incur the least costs for the city (at the expense of
HANH and the state and federal government) and produce the highest number of
units. But in practice, he could not locate the units on privately-owned land without
angering neighbors, so he agreed to sell the isolated land at Springside and to create a
neighborhood that would be his legacy.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY

II.

69

" W E THOUGHT WE WERE MOVING TO WOODBRIDGE"; LIFE AT W E S T RCX:K,

1950-1968^
"We are isolated from the rest of the city out here. Geographically, we are a community. We
felt it was about time we acted as a community." (Mrs. Ralph Fisher, first chairwoman of the
Brookside-Rockview Community Council, Nov. 5.
^'

In the early 1950s, hundreds of New Haven's citizens look advantage of lowinterest, federally backed mortgages to buy houses in suburban developments encircling the city. A smaller number benefited from a more overt set of govemment
entitlements. Rather than invest in a monthly mortgage, they applied to live in publicly-subsidized housing developments on the city's edge. About one hundred people, including Mayor Celentano and Connecticut Govemor John D. Lodge, watched
the first residents of Brookside receive the keys to their new homes on October 26,
1951.'*^ The opening of Rockview, shortly before the end of 1952, was decidedly
less glamorous; in this federal, rather than state funded project of the McCarthy era,
each new resident had to sign an affidavit swearing that he or she was not a member
of the Communist Party.''^
Regardless of their political affiliation these 502 families shared much in common. Though Rockview sheltered two hundred "low-income" families, and Brookside housed three hundred families with higher earnings, both developments were
working-class. Nearly half of Brookside's wage-earners labored in manufacturing
jobs throughout the city. Brookside sheltered large families, with an average of 2.31
children per household; the majority of the children were baby boomers bom after
the war. At a time when public housing was often segregated in the Northeast, and
when growing suburban developments like Levittown excluded African-Americans,
the first generation of residents was also remarkably diverse. In a city with a relatively small, but growing, proportion of African-Americans, thirty percent of Brookside's first tenants and approximately one-third of Rockview's initial population was
"non-white.""^^
Whether or not these new neighbors could find common ground in their class,
race or gender, they all shared the experience of life in an isolated community, much
like the suburbanites who lived within sight of them in tidy saltbox and Cape Cod
homes. During the post-war years, when West Rock was a racially balanced and
mixed-income project, its location proved to be both a benefit and a burden to tenants. As in other suburban communities, isolation exacerbated certain problems,
from boredom to juvenile delinquency, but also gave residents the means lo solve
them through cooperative activity. Yet West Rock's residents faced the unique burden of living in a "public neighborhood" whose visibility threatened neighbors' property values. Thus tenant leaders focused on creating standards of respectability to
regulate life within the community and ingratiate residents with neighbors. This
effort proved increasingly difficult through the 1960s, as HANH's mobility policies,
combined with increased housing opportunities in the region, pushed and pulled natural leaders out of the project. By the end of the 1960s. West Rock was becoming a

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

From left. Mayor Celentano, Governor Lodge, and executive director Robert T.
Wolfe, ai Brookside's official opening. November 26. I9.'SI. (Source: MR-35
Brookside Filing Cabinet, "Official Opening 10/25/51 Program, Piclures, Corres."
Folder, HANH Archives)

semi-porous membrane: successful tenants moved out. but could not come in, and the
ones that remained found themselves more politically and socially isolated than
before.
Geography, combined with the institutional history of the site, meant that the
Springside Farm had never been developed within the broader pattern of New Haven's pre-war residential sprawl. In the shadow of the picturesque glacial tnoraine of
West Rock Ridge State Park, and removed from shopping areas, employment centers, and mass transportation, it possessed a suburban quality, which one writer lamented in 1937, should have made it "a choice location for first-class residences"
instead of a home for the indigent."*^ Yet even after New Haven brought infrastructure and a critical mass of people to the site, it retained this secluded character.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY #

71

largely because the site was too inaccessible to attract investment. Geography, however, did not have to determine the fate of this community and to a great extent the
development's failure to become an integral part of greater New Haven was the product of political choices. Through a series of decisions, the city, in cooperation with
the neighboring suburb of Hamden, walled off the project's residents from the surrounding community.
First, in an effort to service this new community, the city set the projects apart by
building resources, such as schools, on the Springside site. As the city plan engineer
explained to Mayor Celentano, "A new Springside School at the present site from all
points of view is the most desirable solution. Construction costs will be less; no
transportation will be required; adequate site area is available at no cost; and the
school would become an idea! community school in the center of the neighborhood a focal point for educational and recreational programs."-^'^ With the construction of
the Katherine A. Brennan Elementary School in 1954 at the heart ofthe old farm, the
residents of West Rock did not need to bus their elementary school-aged children to
schools miles away and they had a space to hold a range of community activities
within walking distance of their homes.
Second, the city oriented the projects towards central New Haven, rather than the
suburb nearby, by dead-ending the development's roads. Undoubtedly, as a contemporary reporter speculated. City Hall had practical motivations for pointing the project's tenants towards the city. "While officials have not said so officially, it is
known that Woodin Street will not be linked with the streets in the project, so that the
business of the residents will be diverted, as far as possible to New Haven businesses." This road design also quieted Hamden's protests that the project would
increase traffic on quiet Woodin Street and lower homeowners' property values.^'
To compound this inconvenience tenants could not even walk to Woodin Street without breaking the law because they would have to trespass on their suburban neighbors' lawns. The Housing Authority, in cooperation with the developers of singlefamily homes in Hamden. actually built a series of short wire fences around the
border ofthe project to discourage residents from using their neighbors' backyards as
shortcuts.^- While they were porous boundaries, both the fences and the truncated
roads emphasized the disconnection between the space of the project and the surrounding neighborhood. And the simple modemist design of the apartments stood
out from the farmland and single-family homes.
This spatial isolation may not have seemed so insidious to West Rock's residents. After all, the cul-de-sac was postwar America's method for subdividing
suburban acreage and fences were a normal means of asserting property ownership.
And as long as they had access to a car families had the mobility to travel on any
roadway.-^^ Yet for most of the day, when the male breadwinners took the cars to
work. West Rock truly was an isolated place circumscribed by geographic boundaries and political decisions. With the only bus line from the project terminating in
Westville. residents had little choice (short of trespassing across the lawns of homeowners in Hamden) but to depend on the more distant central city for their needs.

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

Of course, living apart from the city had benefits for the families of the project.
Sharing the experience of many new suburbanites. West Rock's tenants were able to
enjoy wide vistas, cleaner air, safer streets, and more space for their growing families. Separated from traditional social networks, the new tenants were open to community organization, and found common space in neighborhood institutions such as
the Katherine A. Brennan School. Isolation may also have served to decrease racial
tensions in the integrated project. As a 1955 survey of integration in Connecticut's
public housing projects speculated, "interracial interaction" was more likely to materialize in places removed from the social pressures of the larger connmunity. 'This
may result from the white tenant's willingness to interact within a limited social
environment where he has assurance that such behavior is socially acceptable and a
reluctance to extend such interaction to areas beyond the project where he is not
certain of the reaction of other whites to his conduct."^'' In other words, projects like
West Rock may have been liminal spaces where blacks and whites could interact
without fear of social retribution.
Indeed, West Rock was one of the few racially integrated parts of the city. It
must have encouraged housing reformer Charles Abrams, who cited New Haven's
integrated public housing as an example of the "complete harmony" interracial housing could produce. In 1952, he was convinced that "such projects may mark the
most important gain in the struggle for racial equality since the Civil War."^*" But
was this harmony or merely a grudging tolerance? The evidence is mixed. The
survey of the Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights concluded that most interracial interaction took place only in limited exchanges, like sharing a cup of coffee or
minding each other's children, and was especially likely to emerge in emergency
situations, such as sickness. But some who grew up in the projects during the 1950s
and 1960s remember a color-blind place. Edie Rawls, who was born in Harlem and
grew up in Rockview, remembers a cooperative atmosphere in which residents of
both races shared resources and spent time together even outside of the project's
borders.^^ John Courtmanche and Jack Bobinksi, friends since age four whose families moved from working-class Newhallville to Brookside in the early 1950s, were
part of a "gang" of ten of fifteen boys, including a number of African-American
children. There were always enough kids around for a game of baseball or basketball. Jack and John, still friends after sixty years, went all the way to Georgia to
attend the wedding of an African-American friend in the 1960s. "It didn't matter
what color you were," recalls Bobinksi. now a pediatrician in Wisconsin, "because
we all group up together in the same atmosphere."**^
While their children organized themselves through sports, parents created a more
formal instrument of cooperation. A coalition of residents from the two projects, in
conjunction with the Katherine Brennan School, the local Parent-Teacher Association, HANH staff members, and representatives from the nearby West Rock Nature
Center, officially chartered the Brookside-Rockview Community Council in November 1955. The first chairwoman of the organization summarized its origins succinctly: "We are isolated from the rest of the city out here. Geographically, we are a
community. We felt it was about time we acted as a community." The Council's

CONNECTICUT HISTORY

73

stated purpose was to solve problems of recreation, health, education and "general
welfare." With the help of the energetic young principal of the Brennan School, its
elected representatives organized an adult education program to occupy the residents
of the project. They also successfully lobbied the city to improve lighting on the
semi-rural road leading to the developments. Their agenda for the future included an
expansion of youth recreation for both summer and after school, a call for improved
police protection, and the creation of a pubhc Ubrary within the Rockview administration building.''^
In subsequent years, the Council aimed to develop "community within a community," while also to reduce the tenants' feeling of isolation from their immediate
neighbors. They succeeded in establishing a library within the project and began
publishing a monthly newsletter, distributed by the project's Brownies and Cub
Scouts, describing "events and social life" in the developments. This publication
gave the tenants a forum for protesting poor city services to the project, such as its
"rotten" trash collection.''^ In addition to programming and protesting, the Council
pushed the city to build a shopping center within walking distance of the projects.

Mayor Lee (with shovel) joins members of the Community Council and a local developer (far right) to
begin construction of a shopping center for the development in 1957. The store was supposed to be built
in 1955, but a previous developer backed out. worried that West Rock was too small a market to support
its stores. {Source: MR-35 Brookside Filing Cabinet, 'Corres. RE Shopping Center" Folder, HANH
Archives)

Even the conservative New Haven Journal-dmrier approved of their efforts to

bring "subsidized business" into the neighborhood: "Apparently there is no substitute

74

jfc" CONNECTICUT HISTORY

for the element of convenience and neighborliness supported by the comer store,
where the residents meet in friendly, folksy fashion." The Council encouraged this
small-town atmosphere with community activities like monthly dances for teenagers
at the Katherine Brennan School. ^^
These tangible accomplishments revealed a level of community action at West
Rock. Yet they also demonstrated the growing inability of the residents to maintain
order over their neighborhood. The Council successfully attracted support from the
Housing Authority, City Hall, and even New Haven's right-wing media, for its
agenda. But it had a more difficult time achieving cooperation between neighbors
within the project. Upon closer consideration, the underlying purpose of "reducing
isolation" and elevating "neighborhood spirit" was to enforce a set of standards for
the community that would ensure West Rock's respectability. Because its apartments tumed over regularly, new residents were a constant presence and the Council
wanted to "assist their assimilation into the neighborhood."''' New neighbors needed
to know how to act in a community where the lines between private life and public
space could often seem ambiguous.
The Council had good reason to worry about policing behavior at West Rock.
Community newsletters and free X-ray screenings made good copy for slow news
days at the Register, but every instance of petty crime or vandalism performed at the
development, or in the surrounding neighborhood, reinforced the assumptions that
the city and suburbs already had about public housing projects. The choreographed
"community spirit" of Brookside and Rockview had convinced few that public housing projects made good neighbors. This reality was manifest in debates over another
moderate-rental development. In the late summer of 1956, a proposal to build a new
project in semi-suburban Fair Haven Heights met bitter opposition from neighbors
both within New Haven and in the neighboring municipality of East Haven. (See
figure 2). According to a local representative, it was a violation of "Christian ethics"
to disregard "the wishes of self-sustaining families" by building this project in their
backyards. Another resident wondered why the city did not locate the project next to
Brookside, instead of burdening another suburban area with affordable housing.^^
Instead of accepting West Rock's residents as neighbors, the Hamden homeowners across the border built more fences to separate themselves from the project. They
needed to protect the value of their property. Many of them were first time
homebuyers who may have expected their modest two- and three-bedroom homes to
be a step towards better accommodations in the future. Resale value was essential,
so signs of deterioration from the behemoth next door were unacceptable. Adding to
their fears was the specter of interracial housing. The residents of Woodin Street did
not need the HOLC to know that African-American neighbors would push down
property values: at the time, this was self-evident. ^^ Living in a mostly white suburb
on the outskirts of a city with a proportionally small population of African-Americans (5.4 percent according to the 1950 U.S. Census), they must have further resented the intrusion of "undesirables" into their backyards.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY #

75

Hamden residents could substantiate these fears with concrete examples of the
trouble that escaped from the project. In July 1955, the owner of a neighboring farm
complained to the Housing Authority that project children were trespassing through
his fields. In Apdl 1957, a child from Brookside apparently attacked a woman living
across the border for refusing to pick up a ball and baseball glove thrown over the
short fence separating her land from the project. He jumped the fence and kicked the
woman. In the aftermath of this violence, and other incidents that their petition only
hinted at, the residents of neighboring Thorpe Drive in Hamden demanded that the
Housing Authority build a taller fence to prevent "thoroughfare." "We feel it is not
necessary to list the nuisances and damage that have already been inflicted upon us,
including the severe bodily injury to one of our children."*^ This barrier would also
serve to stop project residents from driving their cars across the grass separating
Brookside Drive and Thorpe Drive; similar trespassing would also occur in March
1958 between Woodin Street and its near-intersections with Wilmot Road and
Brookside Avenue.^-'' In May 1958, under the subtitle "TALK ABOUT LITTERBUGS." the Hamden Chronicle published a photograph of the unfortunate Joe Petrosky of Woodin Street clearing away litter from the wire fence by his home that blew
in from Rockview. And as if West Rock's neighbors in Hamden needed any other
evidence of its tenants' irresponsibility, on March 14, 1961, a two and one-half year
old boy from Brookside drowned in Selden Brook while playing unsupervised with
his four-year-old brother. His mother was shopping and his father was inside taking
care of an infant.^^
One should not read too far into these accounts and assume that all relations
between West Rock and its suburban neighbors were negative. Even the poor woman who had been punted by a Brookside child admitted that her neighbors in Project Building No. 4 were "cooperative and neighborly."^^ And the fact that West
Rock residents commonly crossed their neighbor's lawns to visit to Hamden suggests, if anything, that they had positive connections with families and businesses in
the suburb. Instead, these incidents highlight an essential problem that the Council
had no effective means of solving: that, as tenants of a public housing project, rather
than a private development, they were burdened with collective responsibility for the
mistakes of a few problem residents.
John Courtmanche's mother was the president of the Brookside-Rockview Community Council in 1962. On April 16, 1962, she sent Mayor Lee a request for new
recreation faciiities for the project's youtha group which included her own ten
children. She proceeded to elaborate a long list of activities, events, and services the
Council had provided for tenants since its inception. President Courtmanche asserted
the heart of her argument on the third page of her letter:
The central dilemma of the entire recreation effort in Rockview Brookside is
revealed in the Community Council leadership. There are a few strong leaders with
great interest and drive, and yet there is very little depth of reserve leadership on the
operating level to carry on programs which are obviously needed. Transient residence and all the social and economic problems ofthe community prevent continuity

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

of leadership. A concrete example of this problem was the library service initiated
by the Council which eventually failed because of a lack of continuity among the
members. A teenage giris' club group was discontinued when the leader moved
away. A big brother movement was gradually eliminated when its originator transferred to another job. All this demonstrates that the interest is present provided the
necessary leadership is available.***
Courtmanche's letter to the mayor captured the growing political powerlessness
of the community's tenants during the 1960s. Having moved to the project with her
husband of thirteen years, a foreman at Winchester, in 1953, along with her growing
family, Courtmanche experience these changes firsthand. As more affordable housing opened up in the area, and resident incomes grew, tenants at West Rock had more
opportunities to "graduate" from the project into private homes.^"^ While this mobility satisfied the goals of the Housing Authority, it necessarily limited the ability of
tenants to sustain community organization.
This weakness grew as many New Havenites attacked West Rock on two fronts:
on one hand, conservative soapboxes like the New Haven Register ']t3\QU^\y maintained that the residents of Brookside and Rockview were paying too little for the
comfortable suburban lifestyle the government had afforded them; on the other hand,
political leaders associated West Rock with the concentrated poverty of the city's
other projects and the failures of urban redevelopment that these projects represented.
In the opinion of Robert T. Wolfe, the executive director of the Housing Authority, Courtmanche's concems would have been evidence of the project's success at
moving tenants onto the private market. An Irishman and veteran of the British
Army who began working in real estate management five years after he arrived in
America in 1920. Wolfe had led HANH since the planning phases of West Rock.
His saw public housing as a last resort. "I see in our economy a large group whose
economic status will not permit them to independently acquire living accommodations in our market. They should be helped. If there is no other way of helping
them, the govemment should do it." He must have been buoyed by the tumover
rates at the city's moderate rental projects, such as Brookside. As he reported to
Mayor Lee in January 1962, the city's moderate rental units experienced 158
moveouts, or 21.29 per cent of their total population, in 1961, "considerably below"
the 25.5 per cent rate experienced in 1959, but above the 15.8 per cent tumover in
1960. In 1965, turnover was at about 15 per cent a year, a statistic which Wolfe
attributed to the ability of the private market "to meet the needs" of moderate income
families.^'
Increased income levels among tenants at the project also motivated these
moveouts. As an improving economy and rising standards of living pushed up tenants' wages during the 1950s and 60s, many families were too successful to remain
in the projects because their annual incomes (after a detailed series of adjustments)
exceeded the maximum allowable income for either "low-income" or "moderateincome" projects. Wolfe told a reporter that the Authority "must move right away"
to eject over-income tenants. Even the Courtmanches found their housing in jeop-

CONNECTICUT HISTORY M

77

ardy after their 1963 income evaluation; although they had seven dependents under
their roof at the time, their combined earnings of $12,154 exceeded the maximum
allowance of $10,200 for a family of their size.'^^
Though the Authority made an exception for this family and allowed them to
stay in their apartment, the Courtmanches moved to a colonial home in the city's
Westville neighborhood in 1966. At a time when housing prices ranged from
$12,900 for a home in a poorer neighborhood of New Haven (Fayette St.) to $19,800
for a home in the Westville neighborhood, to $24,000 for a spht-level home in the
suburb of North Haven, or even $37,500 for a raised ranch in the wealthy suburb of
Orange, all but the poorest families could now afford homes. In 1950, when
Celentano built West Rock to solve the housing shortage, there were only 305 unoccupied, non-vacation, dwellings in the city. By I960, New Haven's population gradually spread out into the suburbs and homebuyers could choose from 1,732 vacant
units for rent, and 671 unoccupied dwellings for sale with a median price of
$18,500.'^-^ The Courtmanches were able to put down $6,000 to buy a $20,000 home,
with the help of their son. John, who had been saving money while teaching in New
Haven public schools. With the down payment out of the way, the Courtmanches
likely paid less per month owning their own home than renting their unit at Brookside. With the 30-year FHA mortgage rate hovering around 6 percent in 1966, the
monthly payments on this six-room house would have been approximately $83.94 a
month, less than the $90 the Housing Authority demanded of its tenants living in four
bedroom homes.^"^
Thus in an expanding housing market. West Rock seemed to be an anachronism.
Critics pointed out that these projects were fiscally unsound. In the wake of a recession in 1958, the Housing Authority found itself running Brookside at a deficit because the tenant rents could not cover the rising cost of the Authority's debt service
to the state. HANH pushed for rent increases to cover the shortfall, but tenants
protested and asked for the state's intervention, arguing that they were getting poor
services for the rent they were already paying because it did not include utilities.'^
The New Haven Register, rarely a fan of subsidized anything, found it hard to justify
rent relief for the tenants, calling the moderate rental projects a "bad bargain": "They
are apparently an unmanageable burden to the Housing Authorities that try to operate
them, a frustration and a constant source of complaint to the people who try to live in
them, and the root of endless financial headaches for the taxpayers of Connecticut."
The newspaper used similar rhetoric to bash an increase in the permissible income
limit in 1965 and argued that "other than very unusual or abnormal circumstance." a
person falling within this range ought to be able to fend for himself on the private
market.^^ With executive director Wolfe in basic agreement with this premise. West
Rock was a project without a purpose by the middle of the 1960s.
Yet just as higher incomes and better housing opportunities pushed and pulled
West Rock's residents out, urban renewal was increasing the housing need of African-Americans. While it is true that in New Haven, more whites than African-Americans were evicted in the process of urban renewal, a disproportionate percentage of

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

these African-Americans ended up in public housing, rather than in private homes or

rentals.^^ In the aftermath of Mayor Lee's redevelopment campaign, which leveled
six square milesabout a third of New Haven's landscapeto build new highways,
housing, and commercial space. West Rock did not experience the influx of minority
tenants that downtown projects such as Elm Haven did. According to a list produced
by the city's Relocation Office, of the over one thousand households who once lived
in the Church Street area or the Oak Street corridor, only twelve used the Office's
assistance to move to either Rockview or Brookside between 1958 and 1960.^** Nevertheless, by 1962, the majority of applicants to family-sized public housing units in
the city were African-American. The number of African-American applicants for
coveted four bedroom apartments in "low-income" projects outnumbered white applicants 50 to 16. At "moderate-income" projects, African-American applicants outnumbered white applicants in a ratio of 2 to 1. Shifting racial demographics may
have led some white residents to move out. Some contemporary planners estimated
that public housing projects reached their "tipping point" when more than thirty percent of residents were minority.'^
Cheap housing was pulling and Housing Authority policy and racism were pushing tenants out of the project, and West Rock's leaders found themselves losing control of those who remained. Edie Rawls remembers a neighborhood where children
were subject to constant supervision. "There was a different kind of respect because
everybody's parent knew you. T grew up in a time when you could be disciplined by
anyone. I could stand on the other end of Wilmot Road and if I had done something
it would have been as if my own parents had seen me."^*' The community also
sponsored recreational activities, such as after-school basketball and holiday dances
to keep children out of trouble. In 1957, President William R. Regan of the Community Council had proudly described the propriety of one Halloween night dance to
Mayor Lee: "Gentlemen are required to have, in addition to a girl, a coat and Necktie. There has been no need for further rules and all observers have been surprised by
the transition of daytime monsters to perfect 'ladies' and 'gentlemen.'"**' Yet there
is evidence that this level of supervision may not have been enough to control the
project's children. In November 1961, executive director Wolfe told the New Haven
chief of police that Rockview residents had suffered vandalism and destruction of
personal property but declined to report these crimes "for fear of reprisals from the
children involved." This mischief culminated in an attack in early 1962 on the central institution of order in the project: the Katherine A. Brennan school.
Courtmanche reported that a group of project boys destroyed $ 1,200 worth of glass at
the Brennan school, which, at about $7,400 in 2004 dollars, was evidence of an
incredible scene of destruction.^^
Some help came from outside West Rock. In 1958, a Yale Divinity student,
Peter Pond, working for the YMCA and recognized as the "Outstanding Young Man
of 1957" by the local Junior Chamber of Commerce, moved into West Rock to mentor the project's youth. His goal was to become a role model for the youth and to
point them towards sports emphasizing structure and team competition. Pond went
beyond the requirements of his course work. Jack Bobinski remembers "Ducky"

CONNECTICUT HISTORY <^

79

Pond as one of his strongest influences growing up. Not only did Pond bring Bobinski's gang on adventures to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and even to
Times Square on New Year's Eve, he also encouraged them to apply for scholarships
at local private schools and helped them find summer jobs at YMCA camps working
with disabled
^^
Mentoring may have changed the lives of some of West Rock's children, but it
could not point them all in the right direction. As Bobinski recalls, of the ten or
fifteen friends in his group, "only a third made it." But the success stories are heartening. One friend became a top cop in New Haven; another went to Yale; John
Courtmanche taught in New Haven public schools and eventually became the principal of Sheridan Junior High, his alma mater, and later, Wilbur Cross High School.
Edie Rawls also recalls a place where college was an unquestioned priority. But it
was more than mentoring that helped the project's kids; it was the daily exposure to a
network of families which meant that even children with one parent, like Bobinksi.
were always surrounded by support. Such overlapping responsibility required a stable community, not a place where a quarter of the population tumed over every year.
President Courtmanche's April 1962 letter, which explicitly asked the mayor for fulltime social workers who "could go to the root of the problem, that is. the home. . .."
showed how the community no longer had the strong bonds which could assimilate
even "broken homes" into the neighborhood.^''
The Housing Authority was not prepared to answer this call; it was not until 1966
that officials admitted in their Annual Report to the Mayor that even their moderate
rental projects would need "a high degree of social services." While Mayor Lee
admitted to writer Harrison Salisbury that "this whole question of low-cost housing
units degenerating into ghettos and into slums is an obsession with me," he also
became reluctant to invest further resources into the city's family housing projects.**5
For example, after he initiated a "homemaking program" to teach "basic rules of
living in urban society" to families all over the city (a strategy similar to the one
proposed by family reformers on the Community Council), he was dismayed to learn
that half of the people who took advantage of the program were public housing residents. "Now we have a serious problem. The more we devote our time and limited
funds to helping public housing families, the less we have to extend the program to
the community at large, where the need for this program is great. This is not right."***"
In other words. Lee believed that the Housing Authority should take greater responsibility for the welfare of its tenants and should contribute money from its operating budget for these expenses, in lieu of the city's support. He pushed Wolfe to
address deficiencies in the projects, such as declining maintenance standards, but his
interest was often purely cosmetic. When he opened up the Abraham Ribicoff senior
public housing complex at the end of Brookside Drive in the summer of 1966, he was
appalled at the sight of Brookside residents automobiles parked along the new project's roads as well as the condition of Brookside's buildings. "I don't wish to sound
like Professor [Vincent] Scully," he wrote to Wolfe, but he wanted the Housing Au-

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

thority to work on the design of its projects, including fixing the parking situation
that was blighting his new development.^''
In the course of his long term. Lee began to see concentrated public housing as
an untenable burden for the city he had been struggling to restore, ironically, through
large-scale redevelopment. As early as 1956, he shrewdly recognized the problems
of social isolation that these projects created and preferred to place low-income families in "scattered-site" housing. In 1962, Lee chartered a pilot program in partnership
with Community Progress, Inc. to develop subsidized rental opportunities in the private market. This successful effort anticipated the Section 8 housing program, which
now forms the bulk of subsidized housing in the United States^^ When Lee criticized
public housing, he was referring to the in-town projects that were becoming blighted
ghettos by the middle of the 1960s. Far from his radar, Brookside and Rockview
became politically isolated at a time when they may have needed help the most.
III.

DECLINE

"The times tell us we can no longer be just a landlord. . ." Edward White. Jr., Executive
Director, HANH
^^

Just as West Rock was beginning to decline as a cohesive residential neighborhood, officials at City Hall and in Washington, D.C. were convinced that New Haven
had developed the methods for winning the war against urban decay. "1 think New
Haven is coming closest to our dream of a slumless city," said Robert C. Weaver,
Federal Housing and Home Finance Administrator, in September 1965. Given the
unprecedented sums of money being thrown at the city's problems, their optimism
seemed logical. Through 1959, the Federal govemment had provided New Haven
with $27,424,108 in capital grants, making the city the fifth among ten cities financed under the Federal Urban Renewal program. By 1965, this "embarrassing
imbalance" meant that New Haven spent $745.38 per capita on its shrinking population around 150,000, as compared to New York, which spent $36.77. "^^ The consequences of this massive intervention go beyond the scope of this paper, but in
retrospect, money alone could not alleviate the broader structural changes that were
ruining the city. Likewise, this final section will examine how changing Housing
Authority policies, combined with declining maintenance standards attributable to
insufficient financing and poor management, and the growing impoverishment of the
city as a whole, created the conditions under which no sum of money could restore
West Rock by the 1980s.
During the long postwar tenure of executive director Robert T. Wolfe (19491968), the Housing Authority of New Haven aspired to be a diligent asset manager,
not a social welfare institution. Wolfe was not a crusading "houser" like the men and
women who created HANH in 1938; rather, as part of a second generation of the
housing bureaucracy, his policies awkwardly balanced social goals with fiscal responsibility. He was caught in a trap that two sociologists, H. Warren Dunham and
Nathan D. Grundstein, foresaw in 1955. Because Americans had no common under-

CONNECTICUT HISTORY M

81

standing of the social purpose of public housing projects they put housing authorities
in a constant state of anxiety about their role in the community. Faced with fickle
public opinion, parsimonious legislators, and tenants suspicious of "ulterior motives." authorities searched for ways to justify their existence. The authors predicted
that this insecurity would increase as postwar prosperity limited management's tenant selectivity and introduced "families on the lowest social status and economic
level" into the projects, forcing the authority to expand its role as a social service
organization.^'
Wolfe's failure to address West Rock's structural and social deficiencies followed this trajectory. He was unsure about the role of the Housing Authority as a
public servant. While he believed that his projects were temporary housing arrangements for clients who would move as soon as they had the economic means, he also
realized that a certain level of social engineering was necessary to instill self-sufficiency in former slum dwellers. In the balance between social liberty and control.
Wolfe chose a lukewarm paternalism: provided that tenants cooperated with the Authority's intrusive management practices, such as regular evaluations of income and
job status, or unplanned maintenance inspections, the authority stayed out of their
Hves. At projects like West Rock, this meant that leaders volunteered to police their
community in place of the Authority. But as the demographics of these projects
changed in the 1960s and the community was unable to sustain the same degree of
cohesion, the holes in Wolfe's policy became evident. Without a strong base of
tenant leadership the projects had no means of ensuring neighborhood respectability.
Now, residents needed active support from the Authority to coordinate such a
program.
Under pressure from the Mayor's Office, which sought to integrate the functions
ofthe Housing Authority into its executive Redevelopment Agency, Wolfe resigned
from the Housing Authority in December 1967.^^ j ^ j^e interim. Mayor Lee sent the
executive director and general counsel of the Redevelopment Agency, Joel Cogen. to
investigate the operations of the organization and find out why its projects were failing. Cogen admitted that he prepared the audit "without direct contact with the
Housing Authority," but nevertheless stood by the "import" of his conclusions. In
the course of his report, Cogen argued that HANH's policies bore little relation to the
changing social climate of the times. "In view of new goals, new methods and new
financial resources, an effective public housing program of the late 196O's should
bear little resemblance to the program first initiated in 1937." In the intervening
years, he implied, public housing had changed from a temporary option to a permanent home for the poor. To address this reality an "effective" program had to include
tenants in the decisions that determined the services they received from the Authority. HANH management should create more opportunities for "self-govemment" and
tenant participation. Based on recent judicial decisions guaranteeing the civil rights
of public housing residents, the Housing Authority would also have to update many
tenant policies, including revising sections of its "demeaning and unreasonable"
lease agreements. And HANH needed to address quality of life issues; Cogen suggested providing opportunities "to develop pride in the projects," improving social

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j|S CONNECTICUT HISTORY

service and community action programs, and expanding protective services for
residents. ^-^
Cogen's analysis translated into bureaucratic policy later that year when Edward
White, Jr. became the first African-American executive director of the Housing Authority of New Haven. Revisiting a public relations strategy forgotten since the early
1950s, the Authority released a glossy Annual Report to the general public in 1968
detailing its commitment to improving quality of life at its developments. The revised tenant-centered policies were a radical departure from decades of paternalism.
The Authority asked all staff members to increase their sensitivity towards the community and initiated "human relations training sessions" for this purpose. In an effort
"to eliminate favoritism and subjective judgments" in the application process, the
Authority no longer looked at a tenant's housekeeping history or made "moral judgments" about an applicant. "Now selection is based only on income level, availability of the appropriate apartment size, and date of application." Once tenants got into
the project the Authority made it easier for them to stay. To avoid evictions HANH
loosened its rent collection procedures and allowed tenants to pay their rent in installments. It also targeted the problems of over-income tenants, describing plans in the
works that would allow residents of moderate-rental projects like Brookside to buy
their apartments to preserve an income mix at the project. In this new order, the
concerns of residents were paramount. HANH included two tenants on its Board of
Commissioners, including Brookside resident Albert Rogers. The Authority also expanded the power of its Tenant Representative Committee, which brought one or two
delegates from each project to a city-wide board to meet with HANH officials. The
Committee sought "official bargaining status" with HANH and requested permission
to form a grievance board with the power to make "final rulings" on a range of tenant
policies and regulations.^*^
Why was the Housing Authority pandering to its tenants? Arguably, these reforms were long overdue. HANH was belatedly responding to protests tenants had
expressed since the start of public housing in the city. Indeed, its response may have
come too late. Over four days in August 1967 rioters looted businesses in lowincome neighborhoods of the city and started as many as forty serious structure fires.
Among the torched buildings was the headquarters of the Housing Authority on
Ashmun Street. Not only did the rioters attack the building, but they also seriously
injured firefighters who arrived to put out the blaze.^^ HANH joined many whiteowned businesses as a target, revealing the anger of some African-Americans towards this institution. Yet rather than see these changes as solely reactive, it is more
likely that the new leadership of HANH genuinely believed that encouraging grassroots organization would improve housing projects. It was committed to finding new
ways to accommodate the "special and pressing needs" of public housing residents,
so the Authority tumed to the tenants for answers.^''
Much of this intervention helped West Rock's residents, as the Authority tried to
address long-standing complaints. With the help of Community Progress, Inc.,
HANH was finally providing its under-served tenants at Brookside and Rockview

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83

with social services and advocacy. In May 1968, the CPI assisted tenants in publishing a newspaper that sharply attacked the mayor of Hamden for his support of the
infamous fence around West Rock. Frustrated by the isolation it created, residents
doubted his argument that the fence was designed to protect their children. These
writers cited a letter written on their behalf by the Human Relations Council of New
Haven, another Lee-era effort to assuage the ethnic, social, and racial tensions building in the city, which said that the residents of Brookside-Rockview were "affronted
by the inaccessibility of their area to the facilities of their area." Tenants were given
opportunities to be vocal about their feeling of isolation and also to help design
improvements to their neighborhood. For example. HANH considered their input to
be critical in the construction of the experimental, ail-modular "Oriental Masonic
Homes," designed by Paul Rudolph, on the Springside site nearby. And rather than
demolish their communities. 166 teenagers from West Rock pooled their spending
money to form a Teen Council that would coordinate community service activities,
recreation, and even scholarship fundraising. They formed this committee to create a
"suitable headquarters" for receiving state grants for such activities.^'' Thus residents
made tangible gains from this democratization.
The problem with abandoning top-down control was that the Authority created a
power vacuum in its projects. The Authority now had less ability to regulate the flow
of tenants into the project and even less control over their exit, as loosened disciplinary standards made it easier for problematic tenants to avoid eviction. As we have
discovered. West Rock's visibility as a dense pubhc housing project in a suburban
area made it vulnerable to the mistrust of its neighbors, so tenant leaders labored
(with mixed success) to legitimate and to protect their community by enforcing standards of proper behavior. These organizers needed the support of a housing authority
which could regulate the community in ways they determined to be socially desirable. Thus, while concemed tenants could now join a city-wide board to monitor
HANH policies, their power was contingent on the strength of a decapitated
Authority.
While it was earnestly adopting a less familiar role as a social service provider,
the Housing Authority of New Haven was faltering in its traditional role as a building
manager. By the late 1960s, West Rock was due for a complete overhaul. Its heating system, which used a central boiler house to warm individual units, often broke
down, leaving tenants in the cold (and threatening rent strikes). Inadequate insulation, including poorly sealed windows, added to the problem. Tenants complained
that the Authority's painting schedules were too infrequent and that management
charged too much for repairs; for example, one resident of McConaughy Terrace,
another moderate-rental project, claimed that HANH charged him three dollars to fix
a clogged toilet.^^ Undoubtedly, such policies were a disincentive for residents to
promptly repair their rental units. And after twenty years of intensive use by hundreds of children, the projects needed concerted capital investment to remain viable.
The Authority was aware of this problem, and in its 1968 Annual Report blamed
gaps in financing for delays in renovations. As director Wolfe had complained to

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Mayor Lee before, HANH did not have sufficient resources to cover its expanding
list of liabilities. Its moderate-income projects, including Brookside, had been operating at a loss for ten years because the income received from tenants could not keep
up with infiation. The state financed these units under the assumption that moderateincome rents would be high enough to maintain these projects and cover their debt
burden. This projection turned out to be bankrupt because the Authority could not
raise rents without "undermining the purpose of moderate-rental projects." Saving
these units by raising rents would disenfranchise poorer tenants; maintaining existing
rent levels would put the Authority further in debt and force it to drain resources
from its federal projects to bolster its ailing state-financed units. HANH feared that
its federally-sponsored projects, like Rockview, might also face this same dilemma if
the Department of Housing and Urban Development failed to provide a five million
dollar modernization grant. "An inflationary spiral in the cost of labor, material, and
utilities, the need to upgrade projects deteriorating under normal stress of hard use
and age, and new demands for specialized services for tenants such as a security
force and social welfare service will not be off-set by the present level of Federal
assistance."^^
With its limited resources tied up in so many unforeseen ways, HANH allowed
small problems to expand into much bigger ones. Although the waiting list for apartments had not abated significantly, many units remained vacant for months while the
Authority neglected to make repairs and prepare them for new renters. Plywood
boards became part of the landscape. These unoccupied apartments exacerbated the
problem of juvenile terror. In an inversion of Courtmanche's stmctured play scape,
the project's youth adopted the empty units as informal "recreation centers," according to Josephine Lewis, a Rockview tenant who cotnplained to executive director
White about the "incredible situation" on Rockview Circle in October 1976. In one
apartment, vacant for two months, "Children of all ages. . .smoke, play, run up and
down stairs, etc. . .All windows in the apartment were smashed within a week, and
since then the children have been literally taking it apart piece-by-piece." Lewis also
commented on the Authority's poor maintenance cycle. Officials failed to set aside
enough funds to pay for preventative measures like sealing vacant apartments which
could forestall rapid deterioration. "I see no reason, however, why my family and
others like us (who also have budgetary problems) should be left in this precarious
and potentially dangerous position while the Housing Authority continues to operate
in a vicious cycle of futility by compounding its own problems,"'^
Changes in federal housing policy help explain why HANH was unable to budget
tnore effectively and anticipate regular maintenance. In 1969, the Brooke Amendment limited the rent housing authorities could charge in federal housing projects to
25 percent of a tenant's income. Housing historian Robert Biles argued that this
policy was a disincentive for higher income tenants to stay in the project and "paved
the way" for an increase in the number of tenants receiving government assistance.
For HANH, the Amendment meant a drop in income and an increased dependence on
federal subsidies to make up the difference. This funding became scarcer by the
early 1970s, as the Nixon administration moved towards privatizing public housing.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY #

85

Following a series of scandals involving the Department of Housing and Urban Development, President Nixon declared a moratorium "on all federaiiy subsidized housing programs."'*" The result. Section 8, was a federal housing policy which
supplemented the private housing market at the expense of existing publicly-owned
units.
Meanwhile, the inflationary spiral feared by the Annual Report began early in
1968. as "the most serious economic crisis since the Depression" marked the transition from a postwar boom economy to the "stagfiation" of the 1970s."'- HANH
found it even more difficult to keep with its expenses. The Authority operated on a
fixed budget drawn from outside sources, including HUD and the state of Connecticut, which could not match rising costs in labor and materials produced by infiation.
In 1979, the State of Connecticut began formal procedures to tum its insolvent moderate-income projects over to the federal government. As a reporter explained. "Escalating heat charges and rapid building deterioration, plus tenants being unable to
meet their rents [were] major factors in the failures of the projects," and so it had
become impossible for these units "to carry themselves.""'^
Epilogue: A suburban ghetto
Could adequate financing, combined with rational budgeting and managing, have
restored West Rock? Not likely. By the late 1970s, West Rock had become a dead
end for many who lived within its fenced confines, rather than a springboard to better
opportunities and thus the diverse, mixed-income community of the past would never
retum.
Meanwhile. New Haven had become a place of "last resort" in its own right. The
1970s marked a period of dramatic decline. Many long-time residents left the city
and never came back. A new form of suburbia was developing: whereas in 1950,
suburbanites in Hamden or East Haven generally worked downtown or in factories
on the city's outskirts, and thus spent most days within its borders, the cognitive
landscape of the emerging "edge city," oriented along the highway corridors of the
Merritt Parkway and Interstates 91 and 95 was far more diffuse. The economy ofthe
city had shifted from heavy manufacturing to services and most of New Haven's
factory jobs had moved to newer facilities in the suburbs or in the Sunbelt. West
Rock was no longer "working class" like in the days when it was designed to house
factory operatives. By the 1960s both John Courtmanche's and Edie Rawls' fathers
were no longer employed by Winchester. Courtmache became a clerk for a reai
estate company in 1964 and used his connections with the Democratic political machine to join the New Haven Redevelopment Agency a year later as a property manager; Rawls worked maintenance at Shartenberg's department store downtown. With
the loss of many unskilled jobs. New Haven's population had become much poorer,
just as it was approaching fifty percent minority. The city's total population dropped
26 percent.'*^ Aside from a few upper-middle class neighborhoods. New Haven was
no longer a desirable place to purchase a home. With rising crime rates, it became
associated with real fears of urban disorder and many residents found it simpler to

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CONNECTICUT HISTORY

find a new place to live rather than bother with the problems of the city. West
Rock's decline had predicted New Haven's postwar fall. With high property taxes,
poor city services, and failing schools, combined with a lack of social control, many
upwardly mobile New Haven residents found little reason to stay.
These problems only worsened in the 1980s. Not only had West Rock become a
welfare island, but it had also become a lawless center of the drug trade. Calling
themselves the "Wild Wild West," youth gangs ruled the project. West Rock's .street
name was the "Terror Dome," and the intersection of Wilmot Road and Rockview
circle, the heart of Rockview, was called "crack comer." As a local alderman, who
grew up in Rockview in the 1960s, told a reporter, "In the 70s, the dmgs were dealt
behind closed doors. In the 80s, it's in the streets," and, according to a staffer in the
Parks Department, as easy to buy as a cup of coffee.'^^ Eddy Rawls moved her
mother out of Rockview and into a retirement home downtown; although her mother
"felt very comfortable" in the project, her children decided to move her out after she
began calling late at night to report shootings down the street.'^ Despite large grants
from HUD in 1984 to redevelopment West Rock, the projects lingered for twenty
more years in the care of a mismanaged, and sometimes corrupt. Housing Authority.
The history of West Rock as a neighborhood will soon end. In January 2004, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development authorized a four million dollar
grant to relocate the remaining residents of Brookside (Rockview had been boarded
up some years before). Demolition of Rockview began in February 2004. As of
September 2005, however, fifty families still lived in Brookside and the project's
demolition was stalled by an obscure Connecticut statute demanding one-for-one replacement of any public housing unit tom down.'^^ It is unclear what will replace
these units, though it should be evident that any new development will not be successful without better integration into the regional fabric.
But even tearing down the wall and extending the project's roadways would only
be a partial solution. As the history of West Rock shows, geographic isolation and
design cannot predict the decline of a housing project. For its first fifteen years,
residents chose to live on the urban frontier because it afforded a better quality of life
than the crowded and unsanitary quarters of the city. For some, like John
Courtmanche's father, this move meant working two jobs to pay the project's rent."'^
Instead of addressing how the project could have been a more "defensible" space, a
comprehensive answer would determine why the project came under attack. These
factorsa leadership void aggravated by an expanding housing market, combined
with the decline of the city's employment base and social resources and the failure of
govemment to financially support its subsidized housingcannot be designed away.
Perhaps it will remain true that no matter how you travel to the West Rock public
housing project, you will always arrive at a dead end.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY #

87

NOTES
' Today, West Rock refers to a scattering of housing projects, schools, and social service buildings
that the city, state, federal govemment and Housing Authority have gradually incorporated onto this
isolated campus.
2 In their respective research on the history of New Haven's public housing, Robert A. Solomon and
Douglas Rae introduced me to the unique circumstances of West Rock. Going beyond their observations,
this paper explains West Rock's rise and fall through previously neglected archival sources and tenant
interviews. See Robert A. Solomon, "Building a Segregated City: How We All Worked Together." Saint
Louis University Public Law Review 16 (1997):265-320; and Douglas Rae, dry.' Urbanism and Its End
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
3 In Chicago, and many other American cities, public housing institutionalized racial and economic
segregation, while in Detroit, as in most American suburbs, racially-charged opposition meant it was
hardly built al all. However, in some northeastem cities, like New Haven, public bousing remained
racially integrated ibr many years. See Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing
in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and Thomas J. Sugrue, The
Origins ofthe Urban Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
"* Lawrence J. Vale, Reclaiming Public Housing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 4-7,
provides a concise history of the rise and fall of the national public housing program. Vale compares the
experience of three "public neighborhoods" in Boston. I have benefited from his bibliography on public
housing, and also from his methodology for .studying these developments.
5 Rae, ix-xix.
^Solomon. 301.
"> Ciuzens' Housing Council of Greater New Haven, Inc.. "WHAT WE HAVE FOUND OUT
ABOUT THE NEED FOR LOW-RENT HOUSING" (undated, stamped Mareh 30. 1949). 4, Box XIX,
Folder A-1. William C. Celentano Papers. New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven, CT.
Hereafter referred to as Celentano MSS.
8 Mayor Ceientano to Housing Authority Chairman C.-E.A. Winslow. Nov. 28, 1949. Celentano
MSS, Box XIX, Folder A-2.
5 Solomon. 298; Kenneth Jackson. Crabgrass Frontier (New York: Oxford University EVess, 1985),
232.
'0 Rae. 263-274. The most well-known study of the HOLC and its effect on America's urban
spatial hierarehy is Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier. 190-218; Amy Miller. "Redlining and the
HOLC," Journal of Urban History 29 (2003): 394-420 complicates Jackson's thesis by showing how
banks and mortgage brokers used resources other than the HOLC surveys to red-line American cities.
" The Community Development Committee of the New England Councii. Post-War Housing: A
Challenge to the New England Communities (Boston: New England Council, 1944), 6, 10.
'^ Roy Wenzlick & Co. Housing and Construction in the New Haven Area (St. Louis: Eebruary
1945). 29, 13, 19, 25, 24.
'3 Rae, 254-257; "7000 Families of City Living in Poor State," New Haven Register, June 29, 1948.
''' Jackson, 190-218; "Citizens unit presses plea for action." New Haven Register, October 4. 1947.
Also, see letters and memos about the crisis to the Mayor in Celetano MSS, Box IX. Folder D.
'5 Rae, 295; Raymond Wolfmger, The Politics of Progress (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1974),
162-163, cited in Rae 298.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY

'^ Robert A. DabI, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1961).
'^ Early in 1946. he established an Emergency Committee for Housing, and lobbied state representatives to create legislation Ihat would fund "a temporary housing program." Celentano to CT State
Representative Avallone and State Senators Lyncb and Damiani, May 4, 1946, Celentano MSS, Box IX,
folder D.
8 Celentano to CT Governor Chester Bowles, Feb. 18, 1949, Celentano MSS, Box XIX, Folder A1.
19 Celentano's comments lo A.L. Johnson, the direetor of HANH, are telling: 'T am attaching herewith two letters wbich are quite self-explanatory and give you some idea of the kind of pressure on our
office. Both of these families have called on us and it would seem that they are certainly worthy of
consideration." Celentano to Johnson, August 13, 1948, Celentano MSS, Box XVIII. Folder W-2.
20 New Haven Corporation Counsel George G. DiCenzo to William L. Halden, Attorney General of
Conn.. Oct. 4, 1946, Celentano MSS. Box IX, Folder D; "Lee Abolishes Housing Post of Dimenstein."
New Haven Regi.iter, February 17, 1954; HANH regularly held open houses to adverti.se their units, and
also published photo-filled Annual Reports from the late 1930s until the early 1950s to attract support for
their mission.
2' See resolutions signed by these organizations in Celentano MSS, Box XIX. Folder A-2; and
"Vets happy over homes," The New Britain Herald. November 4. 1951: "Citizens unit presses plea for
action," New Haven Register, October 4, 1947. For more on tbe role of Citizen's Housing Councils, see
Hans Froelicher, Jr., "Citizen Actionevery community needs a full time citizens housing council"
NAHO Journal of Housing (August 1951): 271-274.
22 In 1950. the median gross monthly rent in New Haven was $43.39. and a cold water flat in
working-class Newhallville cost as little as $25. 1950 Census of Housing, Vol. 1 General Characteristics,
Part 2: 7-3; and John Courtmanche. Phone interview with author, April 4. 2004.
23 B.M. Pettit, executive director HANH. to Celentano, Jan 2 1948. Celentano MSS, Box XVIII,
Folder W-1; "Report. To the Members of tbe Mayor's Housing Commitee," Jan 30 1948. Celentano
MSS, Box XVra, Folder W-l.
24 James C. Shannon to Celentano. April 21 1948. Celentano MSS, Box XVIII, Folder W-I. The
federal govemment never funded these so-called "cooperative" housing opportunities for the middleclass in their vast postwar expansion of public housing. Although Tide III of the Housing Act of 19.50
initially underwrote loans for moderate-income units, powerful real estate, home-building and banking
lobbies demonized the legislation as "communistic, socialistic, and insidiously un-American." and thc
Act was passed without any provision for cooperative housing. Roger Biles, "Public Housing and Ibe
Postwar Urban Renaissance," in John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szyvlian. eds.. From
Tenements to Taylor Homes (University Paric: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2(XX)), 145.
25 Chester Bowles to Celentano, March 8, 1949, Celentano MSS. Box XIX. Folder A-1. See also
Bowles's Tomorrow Without Fear (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), in which he argued tbat
housing should be the primary vehicle for ensuring postwar prosperity "not only to correct our shocking
lack of decent homes, but to increase the purchasing power of our people." Cited in Adam Rowe. The
Bulldozer in the Countryside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2(X)1), 32.
, 26celentano to Bowles, Marcb 21, 1949, Celentano MSS. Box XIX, Folder A-1; Bowles to
Celentano, June 21, 1949, Celentano MSS. Box XIX. Folder A-i.
27 Bowles to Celentano, April 27. 1949, Celentano MSS, Box XIX. Folder A-I.
28 United States Conference of Mayors. "Statements with Reference to Slum Clearance and Housing
Needs in Typical American Cities." (Congressional Record-Appendix, 1949):A4133; Celentano MSS,
Box XIX. Folder A-3; "City to seek 800 low rent housing units," New Haven Register, August 21, 1949.

CONNECTICUT HISTORY M

89

^9 Housing Act of 1949, a.s cited in Robert Moore Fisher, 20 Years of Public Housing (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1959), 70; Bemard E. Loshbougb. "Connecticut's housing program is rolling,"
NAHO Journal of Housing (Juiy 1950): 234.
30 Frank J. Wrinn to Celentano, Mar. 3. 1950, Celentano MSS, Box XXVII, Folder M; The New
Haven Union Company. Institutions and Features ofthe City of New Haven, Conn, (undated, 1898?), 78.
(available at New Haven Colony Historical Society).
31 Douglas Orr. "Preliminary Study for Development of Moderate Rental Housing: Springside
Area," Nov. 3, 1949. HANH Archives, New Haven, CT, file cabinet labeled "Brookside MR-35." folder
labeled: "Orr's PreUm. study of site, Nov 3 1949." Hereafter, HANH Brookside document cited as
HANH MSS. MR-35.
3- Appendix to Report of Special Committee on Moderate Rental Housing, April 10. 1948.
Celentano MSS. Box, XVIIl, Folder W-1. The pigs eamed the city $20,000 in yearly gross income, as
five truckloads of garbage were brought for them to grub through per day. "City Piggery al Springside to
be Closed," New Haven Register, January 28. 1951.
33 M. T. Cooke. Jr.. "Housing Site Problemsa review of the site selection experience of 12 cities
since 1949." NAHO Journal of Housing (February 1952): 48.
3'' Pieter J. van Heiningen (Superintendent of Parks) and Charles E. Downe (City Plan Engineer) to
Celentano. November 2. 1948. HANH MSS, MR-35: "City of New Haven General Correspondence."
35 City Plan Commission to H.M. Pettit, November 7 1949, Celentano MSS, Box XIX. Folder A-2.
36 Celentano to Winslow. November 12. 1949, Celentano MSS, Box XIX, Folder A-2.
3"^ Celentano's secretary, Alice, who transcribed the ultimatum to the mayor, also left these remarks:
"(this is just the impression I gotI also got the impression that he was very snippy and nasty and
annoyed with the whole procedure. . .)" Office Memorandum, re: Winslow to Celentano. November 28,
1949, Celemano MSS. Box XIX. Folder A-2.
38 Celentano to Winslow, November 28, 1949. Celentano MSS, Box XIX, Folder A-2.
3^ Lee later claimed to a biographer that he would have beaten Ceientano by 1300 voles, instead of
officially losing by 700, if one of bis party workers had not gotten drunk and left nearly 2000 votes in a
desk drawer. Allan R. Talbot, The Mayor's Game (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 3.
^ Press Release. Richard Lee, October 31. 1949. Celentano MSS, Box XIX, Folder A-2.
*' City Plan Commission. June 23. 1950, Celentano MSS, Box XXVII, Folder M.
Winslow to Celentano. Marcb 15. 1950. Celentano MSS. Box XXVII. Folder M. Despite this
cooperation, both sides would spend subsequent months disputing a "fair" price for the Spritigside land;
City Plan Commission. June 23. 1950, Celentano MSS, Box XXVII. Folder M; Celentano to the Boanl of
Aldermen, July 10. 1950. Celentano MSS. Box XXVIl, Folder M.
*3 "State aims to unload 3 city projects." New Haven Register, December 16, 1979.
** Tbis quotation comes from an interview with Edith Rawls, who moved to Rockview from Harlem
at age six and lived there until she graduated college in 1967. She is now the tenant liaison for the
Housing Authority of New Haven. She has largely fond recollections of life at West Rock. Interview
with author. New Haven. CT, 31 October 2003.
^S "Brookside-Rockview Community Council Organized by Enthusiastic Residents." New Haven
Register. November 6, 1955.
'^ For more on the social and political implications of this "dual-tier" bousing policy, see Gail
Radford, Modem Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996). 199-209; "Govemor hails completion of Brookside development," New Haven
Evening Register. October 27, 1951.

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'^7 "First tenants begin moving into Rockview." New Haven Register, December 29. 1952.

*8 These breadwinners were not only men. While HANH did not accept single molhers into their
projects at the time, for "moral" reasons, they made exceptions for war widows. Jack Bobinski, Phone
interview with author, 7 April 2004; These figures come from the file "Occupancy Statistics of 3(X) Initial
Families," HANH MSS: MR-35. The actual family sizes ranged from one or no children to as many as
ten; Tbe statistics on Brookside come from the file "Occupancy Statistics of 300 Initial Families." HANH
MSS: MR-35. Tbe Rockview figure is based on the projection made by HANH planners to ihe FHA
regarding the racial balance in the development. See the HANH Archives, New Haven. CT., file cabinet
labeled "Rockview: 4-6," folder entitled: "Development Program 4-6" (draft dated I December 1950) .
^9 Arnold Guyot Dana, New Haven's Problems: Whither the City? All Cities? (New Haven: 1937),
97, cited in Rae, 140.
5" Charles E. Downe to Celentano, September. 15. 1950, HANH MSS, MR-35: "Mayor General
Correspondence."
51 "Shopping centers seen for 2 housing projects," New Haven Evening Register. October 29. 1951;
See six letters from Woodin Street residents to PHA written between July 13-16. 1950. "General Correspondence," HANH MSS: 4-6.
52 Robert T. Wolfe to Mayor Richard C. Lee. 26 April 1957, Series I, Box 11:294, Richard C. Lee
Papers. Yale University Archives, New Haven. CT. Hereafter cited as Lee MSS.
53 Anecdotal evidence suggests that most families owned one car. But some residents, like Brookside tenant Jack Bobinski's motber. had to travel on three buses to get to work. John Counmanche,
Phone interview with author, 4 April 2004; and Jack Bobinski, Phone interview with author, 7 April
2004.
5^ Henry Stetler, "Racial Integration in Public Housing Projects in Connecticut," (Hartford: Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights, 1955), 43. This survey was based on a bi-racial sampling of 950
tenants from representative projects across the state. Sociologists frequently perlbrmed such studies in
the 1950s. See Hans B.C. Spiegel, "Tenants' Intergroup Altitudes in a Public Housing Project wilh
Declining White Population," Phylon (I960-), Vol. 21. No. 1 (1st Qtr.. 1960): 30-39 for a survey covering a comparable demographic five years later, and also for an overview of tbe literature on this subject.
55 Nathan Straus, ed.. Two-Thirds of a Nation: A Housing Program (New York: Albert Knopf,
1952), 226.
56 Stetler, 31-63; Edith Rawls, Interview witb author, 31 October 2003.
5"^ Jobn Courtmanche, Phone interview with author, 4 April 2004; and Jack Bobinski. Phone interview witb author, 7 April 2004.
58 "Brookside-Rockview Community Council Organized by Entbusiastic Residents." New Haven
Register, November 6, 1955.
59 "Wolfe to talk at meeting of housing group," New Haven Evening Register. April 3, 1956; "Community Council issues publication at Brookside-Rockview." New Haven Evening Register. May 22,
1956; "Project's residents critical of City's trash collection," New Haven Evening Register. July 13,
1956.
Comer Store," New Haven Journal-Courier, July I, 1957. Also, sec the folder labeled
"Correspondence Re: Shopping Center," HANH MSS: MR-35; William Regan to Richard Lee, 20 November 1957, Lee MSS: Series I, Box 11:294.
6' "Wolfe to talk," New Haven Register. April 3, 1956.
62 John Hughes, chairman, 31st Ward Citizen's Committee to Lee, 25 September 1956. Lee MSS,
Series I, Box 9:221; Nathaniel Cawley to Lee, 29 August 1956. Lee MSS, Series I, Box 9: 221.

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63 The discrimination of realtors against African-Americans, Jews, and other groups was well
known in the 1950s and even supported by many suburbanites who feared "social deterioration" from the
influx of these undesirable neighbors. Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1955), 139.
W Robert T. Wolfe to Capt. Shaw of CT State Police. July 11,1955. HANH MSS: MR-35, "General
Correspondence"; Petition of residents of Thorpe Drive. April 29, 1957. Lee MSS. Series I. Box 11:294
65 Robert T. Wolfe to Lee, 26 April 1957, Lee MSS, Series I, Box 11:294; Thomas R. Kelly,
maintenance supervisor for HANH, to Frank Cattaneo. chief of police, Hamden, Mareh 5, 1958. HANH
MSS: MR-35. "General Correspondence."
^ Hamden Chronicle, May 1, 1958. However, according to the executive director of HANH. the
city of New Haven, with its infrequent trash collection, was probably more culpable for tbis problem.
Robert T. Wolfe to U e . 26 April 1957, Lee MSS. Series I, Box 11:294; H.M. Orio & Company to Robert
T. Wolfe. March 14, 1961. HANH MSS: MR-35. "General Coixespondence."
6'' Robert T. Wolfe to Lee. 26 April 1957, Lee MSS, Series I, Box 11:294
68 Mrs. Gordon Courtmancbe. Pres. B-R Council to Lee, April 16, 1962, Lee MSS, Series I. Box 52:
1045. Emphasis added.
69 This information was compiled from the New Haven City Directories, available in the New Haven Free Public Library; "Graduate" was the term used in a letter from New Haven Relocation Director
A. Mermin to Lee. March 24. 1958, Lee MSS, Series I, Box 15: 396.
William E. Keish Jr., "City Housing Director Wolfe reluctant landlord of 11,000." New Haven
Register March 7. 1964.
"" Housing Authority of the City of New Haven. Report to the Mayor of 1961, January 15, 1962,
Lee MSS, Series I, Box 52: 1045; William E. Keish, Jr.. "Moderate-rent income limit raised," New
Haven Register, November 11.1965.
"^2 Ihid; HANH, "Report to (CT) Public Works Dept., Housing Division, on overincome tenants at
Brookside." April 29. 1963, HANH MSS: MR-35. "untabeled folder."
" Real Estate, New Haven Register. July 10. 1966; 1950 Census of Housing. Vol.1. General Characteristics. Part 2:7-3; 1960 Housing Census. Vol.2, Metropolitan Housing (111-140), 124-11.
^^ John Courtmanche, Phone Interview with author, 4 April 2004; "Moderate-Rent Income Limit
Raised" provided the rents at Brookside, and the mortgage rates are available at the Economic Research
webpage ofthe Federai Reserve Bank of St. Louis: (http://researeh.stlouisfed.org/fred2/dala/FHA30.txt).
The monthly mortgage payment, based on the washingtonpost.com simple loan payment calculator http://
nfns.com/cgi-bin/webfinancere.cgi?activity=simpie). omits foregone interest, property taxes, and tax deductions, and the economic cost of the down payment.
'^5 "Tenants pusb protests on project rentals," New Haven Evening Register. March 7, 1958.
"^6 "Housing project rentals and public burdens." New Haven Register. March 13, 1958; "Eam
$5,300 plusAnd a subsidized ride," New Haven Register, November 11. 1965.
77 Rae, 340-343.
'8 Completed on February 15. 1960, these lists include data on most of the households relocated
from these sites. Tbey are available in Lee MSS. Series !. Box 37:803.
HANH: "Report on Applications, Family Size, Tenant Tumover in both Low and Moderate Income Categories as of July 17, 1962." Lee MSS. Series I. Box 52: 1046; Martin Meyerson and Edwiud
C. Banfield. Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (New York: The Free Press, 1955), 135. However, John Courtmanche remembers an even racial balance during his family's years at the project.
80 Edith Rawls, Interview with Author. 31 October 2003.

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i William R. Regan, Pres. B-R Community Council, to Lee, November 20, 1957, Lee MSS, Series
I, Box 11:294.
82 Robert T. Wolfe to Chief Francis McManus, November I, 1961, HANH MSS. 4-6: "General
Correspondence"; Mrs. Gordon Courtmanche, Pres. B-R Council to Lee, April 16, 1962. Lee MSS, Series I, Box 52: 1045. The converted figure comes from Consumer Price Index Home Page (bttp://
www.bls.gov/cpi/).
83 "3 ' Y ' youth workers to move into housing projects," New Haven Register, March 2, 1958. For
more on the evolution of so-called "agon" sports, see John Brinckerhoff Jackson. "Places for fun and
games," in Helen Horowitz, ed.. Landscape in Sight (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1-16;
Jack Bobinski, Phone interview with author, 7 April 2004.
^ Interviews with Jack Bobinski (7 April 2004); John Courtmancbe (4 April 2004); and Edie Rawls
(31 October 2003); Mrs. Gordon Courtmanche, Pres. B-R Council to Lee, April 16, 1962, Lee MSS,
Series I, Box 52: 1045.
85 HANH, Annual Report to the Mayor. 1966. Available at the New Haven Colony Historical
Society; Lee to Harrison Salisbury March 27, 1958, Lee MSS, Series I, Box 15; 396.
^^ Lee to Marie McGuire, Commissioner, Public Housing Administration. June 25. 1962. Lee MSS,
Series I, Box 52; 1046.
87 Lee to Robert T. Wolfe, July 7, 1966, Lee MSS. Series I, Box 81: 1480. Vincent Scully, professor of architecture at Yale, was a vocal critic of the monolithic modernist style employed by Lee's urban
renewal projects. See Rae. 331-338,
88 "Lee predicts expansion of public bousing needs," New Haven Register. March 26, 1956; Jobn F.
Bauman, "Jimmy Carter, Patricia Roberts Harris, and Housing Policy in the Age of Limits," in Bauman,
et al. From Tenements to Taylor Homes. 253.
^^ HANH, Annual Report (New Haven, 1968), I. Available at tbe New Haven Colony Historical
Society.
^ Samuel Kaplan, "New Haven pursuing the American dream of a slumless city," The New York
Times, September 7, 1965; Rae, 324.
^' H. Warren Dunham and Natban D. Grundstein, "The Impact of a Confusion of Social Objectives
on Public Housing: A Preliminary Analysis," Marriage and Family Living 17 no. 2 (May 1955): 108,
110.
92 "Wolfe Resigns." New Haven Register, December 20, 1967.
^^Cogen to Lee, March 20, 1968, Lee MSS, Series I, Box 95: 1683. Cogen's bias may have
darkened his conclusions in this report. As the Register speculated in its December 20, 1967 article,
Cogen was considered a strong candidate for assuming Wolfe's job as director of HANH; Joel Cogen,
"Report on the Programs, Policies, and Operations of the New Haven Housing Authority," (March 20
1968), 11, U e MSS, Series I, Box 95: 1683, 4, 6, 7.
94 HANH, Annual Report (New Haven, 1968). 7, 5-6, 23, 14.
95 Rae, 352.
9f> Annual Report, 1968, 1.
9"^ "CPI publication presses fence issue," A'fvi- Haven Register, May 6, I96S; 'Tenants Will Soon
View 'Instant Housing' Plan" New Haven Register. December 27, 1968); and "Wilmot Road Housing
Criticized," New Haven Register. March 4, 1969. For more on the Oriental Masonic Gardens, a HUDsponsored low-income project with atrocious design errors that led it to literally sink into tbe ground, see
Jonatban Harr, "Anatomy of a Housing Project's Failure," New Haven Advocate. March 7, 1979, or
Solomon. 306-307; "Teen Lounge lo be established in Brookside, Rockview section," New Haven Register. December 31, 1968.

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93

'^^ "Rent strike threatened for state aid," New Haven Register. June 3. 1969; "Tenants push protests
on project rents," New Haven Evening Register, Mareh 7, 1956.
'^'^ Annual Report (1968). 23, 24.
Josephine Lewis to Edward White, Ir.. 28 October 1976, HANH MSS, MR-35: "Maintenance."
'01 Bauman. et al,. Tenements to Taylor Homes. 152, 141.
'02 Robert M. Collins. "The Economic Crisis of 1968 and the Waning of the 'American Century,'"
The American Historical Review 101. no. 2. (April 1996): 396-422.
'03 "State aims to unload 3 city projects." Ne^' Haven Register. December 16. 1979.
104 City Directory, 1964 and 1965; and Interview with Rawls, 31 October 2003; and Courtmanche,
4 April 2004; Solomon, 272, 270.
't'-*' John Courtmanche. Phone interview with author. 4 April 2004; Jada Yuan, "Ghetto." The New
Journal (Yale University). Apdl 16. 1999; Randall Beach. "The Crack Trail." The New Haven Advocate,
October 20, 1986.
'06 Edith Rawls, Interview witb author, 31 October 2003.
'"'Joseph Straw, "Authority gets $4 million to move tenants." New Haven Register. January 19,
2004; Andy Bromage. "New Haven projects crumble as residents wonder what future holds," New Haven
Register. September 18, 2005.
'OS John Courtmanche. Interview with author, 4 April 2004.