OT 1955 Connecticut Flood

[David 76]

I agree with everything you say and grew up in a blue collar town myself. I would have never have referred to East Haven as prosperous. Woodbridge maybe.
We agree on the damage of the societal change. But we disagree on the definition of prosperous.

 

[borninansonia]

Prosperous in the 60s, Ansonia, no. I grew up in Ansonia in the 1950s, left there in 1962. If my memory is correct, the big factories left Ansonia in the 50s, I remember the big empty buildings, the downtown had many vacant stores-- I don't ever remember Ansonia as prosperous (except when it comes to football).

 

[DarthGrumpy]

I agree with everything you say and grew up in a blue collar town myself. I would have never have referred to East Haven as prosperous. Woodbridge maybe.
We agree on the damage of the societal change. But we disagree on the definition of prosperous.

Juts my opinion; but, I define 'prosperous' as the ability for a family to provide 'everything' that their family needs (housing, food, supplies, etc.) have a decent car , go on a nice vacation once a year, save for college and retirement, etc. while not living paycheck to paycheck while also supporting via taxes a town that is safe, has good schools, nice parks, with a reasonable commute to work and access to local shopping and services. That is what Derby and Ansonia provided up to the late 70's or so and cannot provide today.

I am not sure I would call Woobridge 'prosperous' either until the last 20 years or so. Back in the '80's, Woodbridge was the sticks. I think a clearer example is Orange (for those who don't know, Orange, Woodbridge and Bethany share the same regional high school - Amity). Even in the early '80's, Orange has had the reputation of being one of the most 'affluent' towns in New Haven county and attracted higher income families from New Haven area, Milford, and the lower Valley.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

Prosperous in the 60s, Ansonia, no. I grew up in Ansonia in the 1950s, left there in 1962. If my memory is correct, the big factories left Ansonia in the 50s, I remember the big empty buildings, the downtown had many vacant stores-- I don't ever remember Ansonia as prosperous (except when it comes to football).

I remember walking around with my family in downtown Ansonia in the late '70's and early '80's, especially going between the old Ansonia Mall and the bakery on Main St (Eddy's, which I believe is still there). The loss of the factory jobs and several other business along Main Street, such as the Ansonia Savings Bank HQ, the failure of the mall, and the ripple effect that hell hole that Olsen Drive/Riverside Apartments was killed downtown Ansonia.

 

[cohenzone]

I was 10 at the time and going to a day camp on West Hill Lake in New Hartford. I remember we usually left bathing suits on outdoor drying racks in a sort of cabana area. When the camp was able to reopen, the racks and bathing suits were long gone. As far as Winsted goes, if you see how really shallow the Mad River is, it's hard to believe what that did to the town.

Several years ago. but decades after the flood, I remember walking near the river and seeing occasional bricks in the water, likely remnants of the day. At the time of the storms,, there was a popular national TV show called The Big Story that dramatized actual newspaper stories. They had one on - I don't remember what newspaper they took it from - about an elderly couple that lived in an apartment building that was very close to the river. One of them drowned and what they went through up to the point that one was swept away and the aftermath was the focus of the story.

 

[cohenzone]

1955... We had just moved from the North End of Hartford to Bloomfield.
I can remember looking out our kitchen door at a steady sheet of rain during Diane. Mayfair Road filled several inches deep with water, flowed like a small brook from lawn to lawn, and retained a strange warmth from the rain that fell that day.
A few days later, we took the '49 Oldsmobile up toward Litchfield Co to survey the impact. In either Winstead or Torrington the main street had washed out. The manhole covers were undisturbed, but they sat atop their steel casements, like a row of stovepipe hats, sticking up about 5ft above the former street grade along Main St.

Where did you live in the North End. Isn't Mayfair just over the Hartford line off Tower Ave.? I lived in Blue Hills a few blocks from Tower in the Cornwall St. area.

 

[David 76]

My Dad was a bricklayer. He prided himself on the fact that he was paid a little better than his factory worker buddies. He supported a family of 6 on his income. My mother had some part-time jobs, usually around my father's injury or illness (his income went to $0)
We were clothed, ate well, never had a new car, rarely went on vacation, but if we did we, drove and it might involve staying at a friend or relatives. First time I flew I was well into my 20s.We rarely went to .restaurants (Mom cooked better anyway)

That is an example that the single, non-college educated, 40 hour income used to be viable he(and now it isn't).

Was it prosperous? I guess it is semantics. It was a decent living

 

[John]

My Dad was a bricklayer. He prided himself on the fact that he was paid a little better than his factory worker buddies. He supported a family of 6 on his income. My mother had some part-time jobs, usually around my father's injury or illness (his income went to $0)
We were clothed, ate well, never had a new car, rarely went on vacation, but if we did we, drove and it might involve staying at a friend or relatives. First time I flew I was well into my 20s.We rarely went to .restaurants (Mom cooked better anyway)

That is an example that the single, non-college educated, 40 hour income used to be viable he(and now it isn't).

Was it prosperous? I guess it is semantics. It was a decent living

My grandfather drove a beer truck and was a teamster - never got to management, he just drove and delivered his entire life. My grandmother did waitressing part time for a few years from what I was told by my mom, but was a stay at home mom for several years too. They raised 3 kids in a small house they owned (Burlington). They got new cars every 2 or 3 years (GMs, mostly Pontiacs), went on vacations (nothing fancy, but did get away). My grandfather liked to golf a lot, did public courses. Not sure that this type of life exists anymore.

 

[David 76]

No. No matter how we slice and dice how our families spent their money, whether they were prosperous or not; it doesn't exist as we knew it.
I feel bad that I have hijacked the thread. Back to the flood!

 

[superjohn]

I remember walking around with my family in downtown Ansonia in the late '70's and early '80's, especially going between the old Ansonia Mall and the bakery on Main St (Eddy's, which I believe is still there). The loss of the factory jobs and several other business along Main Street, such as the Ansonia Savings Bank HQ, the failure of the mall, and the ripple effect that hell hole that Olsen Drive/Riverside Apartments was killed downtown Ansonia.

I was always surprised by that Riverside apartments. Big urban projects are quite possibly the worst social experiment of the last 50 plus years and for a relatively small town those Riverside apartments had the feel of big city projects with big city problems.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

I was always surprised by that Riverside apartments. Big urban projects are quite possibly the worst social experiment of the last 50 plus years and for a relatively small town those Riverside apartments had the feel of big city projects with big city problems.

They are actually related. The Riverside Apartments was built on land wiped clean by the 1955 flood using Federal recovery funds during a time that public housing was viewed as a good thing.

http://www.ansoniahousing.com/

 

[superjohn]

They are actually related. The Riverside Apartments was built on land wiped clean by the 1955 flood using Federal recovery funds during a time that public housing was viewed as a good thing.

http://www.ansoniahousing.com/

Thanks for the link. I live out of CT. now but my heart is always in CT., the valley is an interesting place.

 

[Pudge]

Love the Valley.

I remember as a young guy going to the Thanksgiving Day game with the 2 Pagliaro's and a Central American kicker playing for Derby against Shelton. I had never seen a HS game so buzzed. Derby, at that time, was full of Italians/Irish/Polish. And my grandma gave me sugar cereal that Mom never would.

 

[John]

I've done a little reading on industry of the Valley - it's amazing to think of the sheer concentration of heavy industry CT had. From Bridgeport (something like the most industrial use per square mile of any city in America at one point of time due to the aircraft industry) up through the valley to Waterbury which was the arsenal for ammunition (brass) during WWII.

 

[Paesano]

I was born and raised in Ansonia from the late 60s through the mid 80s. My wife, the same. I lived in a poor part of town. My wife, the good part. My father worked in a factory until he broke his back in an accident on the job. My mother then worked at a hospital in Bridgeport. My wife's father had a better factory job. They lived well, we struggled. I got into my first fist fight in first grade. I got surrounded by the other kid's cousins, aunts and uncles. We were all in the same grade. I freaked out and laid the kid out. I went home and asked my father what to do next time. He said to find a wall and put your back up against it so you only need to fight the people in front of you. I WAS FREAKIN SIX YEARS OLD!!!

My sisters were older and experienced major race riots in the 70s in the high school. I saw drugs being passed around in 5th grade and it wasn't just pot. In 8th grade, a girl in my class was dating a high school kid who was incarcerated. My wife went to the nicer schools on the hill and then a catholic high school. She never experienced what I did and we lived in the same town, a couple of miles apart.

Life in that blue collar town varied a lot. But even lower middle class people could afford a house. The thing is, it isn't the kind of house people want to live in today. No one builds true starter homes anymore. Just drive through the old neighborhoods in towns like that and you will see tiny little homes. Hell, a raised ranch was living large. People are spoiled and have a massive entitlement mentality today. It is a giant rat race.

Someone mentioned Eddy's bakery. I worked there for more than 2 years in high school. My father grew up with the then owner in Italy. It turned out to be a satisfying and rewarding job. I really liked it.

 

[borninansonia]

I had a completely different experience growing up in Ansonia in the 1950s. My brother and I would go to football games, walking from my grandmother's house, it was several miles. We were 5 and 7, and it was no big deal. We had more freedom in Ansonia than kids almost ever get today.

In the 50s, Ansonia was peaceful, but perhaps that was because we lived up on the hill. We moved there when it was still rural, we could walk in the woods for miles (or at least what seemed like miles to little kids) without seeing houses or streets. But I went to school down the hill, Lincoln or Larkin, and later Pendergast for 7th grade when it first opened. Then we moved to Fairfield for (much(2)) better schools, but I liked the people in Ansonia better. Blue collar roots.

 

[Paesano]

Oh yeah, the 50s were WAY different in the valley. The stories my mother told me made it sound like a different planet. My parents won dance contests on the beach and my father was known to sing in the back seat of a friend's convertible as they drove down the post road.

The housing projects helped no one. Not the people who lived in them nor the other residents who experienced first hand what, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" means.

 

[huskiemaniac]

I work in Putnam where they got absolutely demolished when dams broke on the Quinnebaug. Town never recovered

I live and work in putnam...I think the town is beautiful now. It changed with the times and the best is yet to come.

 

[Ricker]

The flood is my absolutely earliest life memory. I was only 3. I remember my father's emotion announcing Unionville was gone, and I remember being on the hill on Plainville Ave above the town and seeing houses floating below and a helicopter landing in an open area repeatedly right near us. I didn't have any complete memories, context, or understanding except the sense of anguish of people clearly made those moments part of my permanent memory. Sort of like clearly remembering where you were when JFK was shot. Somehow it sticks.

 

[borninansonia]

From what I've seen in the Boston area, the housing projects almost always helped the bankers and the developers, almost always destroyed the neighborhoods (example Roxbury before the projects), and rarely helped the poor people who were meant to live within the projects. Ansonia was probably no different.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

From what I've seen in the Boston area, the housing projects almost always helped the bankers and the developers, almost always destroyed the neighborhoods (example Roxbury before the projects), and rarely helped the poor people who were meant to live within the projects. Ansonia was probably no different.

Concentrated public housing projects and the interstate highway system together killed the inner cities. If one looks at the interstate highway maps from the '50's, when a highway was built into a city it almost always went through the poorest neighborhoods because land value were lower and the residents did not have enough political clout to stop it. Thus, the poorer neighborhoods were either torn down and replaced by massive housing projects (see Chicago, the Bronx, etc.) and/or physically separated from the rest of the city (see I-84 in Hartford).

 

[60'sfan]

I was 12 when the storm hit and lived on Ells Street not far from Nolan School. You could see the flood waters from my backyard. I walked down to the flood on Main Street and was shocked at the destruction. A few days later we were required to get shots because we were in the area.

The flood may have cost Ansonia a few great basketball years. Dave Hicks family left Ansonia after the flood and moved to New Haven where he became a star for Wilbur Cross.

 

[Paesano]

I was 12 when the storm hit and lived on Ells Street not far from Nolan School. You could see the flood waters from my backyard. I walked down to the flood on Main Street and was shocked at the destruction. A few days later we were required to get shots because we were in the area.

The flood may have cost Ansonia a few great basketball years. Dave Hicks family left Ansonia after the flood and moved to New Haven where he became a star for Wilbur Cross.

Nolan school. The site of my first fist fight. Good times......not.

 

[60'sfan]

Nolan school. The site of my first fist fight. Good times.not.

Mine too. Not good either, I lost.

 

[CTFIRERETIRED]

I work in Putnam where they got absolutely demolished when dams broke on the Quinnebaug. Town never recovered

And this storm made the future of, then mayor John Dempsey. Also Gov. Ribicoff became a household name as well. The photo is an aerial shot of the Putnam Finishing plant that exploded when flood waters came in contact with barrels of magnesium