The Evolution of An Historic District
According to the New Haven Preservation Trust, the growth of industry around the square by the turn of the 20th century made it increasingly less attractive for the socially prominent. Many homes were purchased by Italian-American families, a number of whom made a living by using their homes as stores. Adaptation to commercial uses and the lower incomes of the new owners downgraded the cachet of the neighborhood significantly. By the 1930s, urban renewal plans called for total clearance; later plans for the new Interstate 91 would have routed the highway through the neighborhood.
None of these things happened, however, due to a fortunate series of circumstances in the 1950s that let to the beginnings of neighborhood renewal. The Wooster Square Project emerged in 1958-60 as a major focus of the New Haven urban rehabilitation program at a time when external events combined to spark a community-wide conviction that the neighborhood was worth saving.
Some of the events and trends that contributed to this undertaking were:
• projects by architectural students at Yale who created models for a restored Wooster Square
• relatively high earnings during World War II, which had permitted savings, and therefore possible homeownership, by motivated residents, and
• the public endorsement of the architectural potential of the neighborhood by the New Haven Preservation Trust, ultimately resulting in the formations of the Wooster Square Conservancy.
These factors provided vital impetus in a period before low-interest rehabilitation loans and grants became available to help the homeowners. Two of the most important early projects were the construction of the Conti Community School a first of its kind when it was completed in 1965 – and the rehabilitation of the Court Street tenements, which comprised some of the worst housing in the area.
The New Haven Preservation Trust published two volumes dealing with the history of Wooster Square and its architecture that were circulated to residents and to city officials. The appointment of a Historic District Study Committee followed, and after other legal requirements had been met, a mail ballot revealed that the historic district had the support of a great majority of neighborhood residents.
The Wooster Square Area project was an effort of national importance. Though possibly atypical because of its valuable architecture, the mores of the Italian American community, and the vitality of Mayor Richard Lee’s urban renewal administration, it nonetheless demonstrated to the nation’s city planner a new potential for the rehabilitation of deteriorated neighborhoods.
