[Currency Pair Crocodile]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Barnum avenue is an interesting and historic street. It begins at Washington Park in the heart of Bridgeport's East Side it has some beautiful old homes and buildings. Named for P.T. Barnum who developed the area into a planned community called East Bridgeport, for many years it was a great place to live and work. It's decline start right after World War II.

The Remington Arms site is proposed to be the site of a new train station on Metro-North. The city wants to knock down all the buildings (or what is left of them) and start to improve and redevelop the area. As bad as you think it is now, it was worse up until 1993 the area just south of there was the ssite of one of the largest and most dangerous public housing projects in the state, Father Panik Village. Most of the village has been replaced by suburban type single-family houses that do kind of look out of place in an urban area It is sad to see what happened there but hopefully the city can turn it around. I am not sure that will happen in my lifetime though. Jay

Must have looked something like this, back in the day. Google is recreating ancient Rome and that could set the race to set various places of yesteryears.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Bridgeport.jpg

[Currency Pair Crocodile]

I'm trying to find at least one image of the site from its hey day. Something like this one of main street, Bridgeport.


http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikiped...portCT1910.jpg

If they were a pre-war factory of arms and ammunition, they must have made some pretty good mortar and shells from the 1920s-40s war scene which must have been deployed in WWII.

[JayCT]

That building with the awnings in the middle of the photo is the Arcade which is a small indoor shopping mall that was just restored. It is a really neat building.

I remember going downtown as a little kid and it being as crowded as that picture shows. That must have been taken on a Saturday when everybody went shopping there. This was before the mall was built in Trumbull (boy am I dating myself) so Bridgeport had several big department stores. These included Read's, Howland's and Levitz. You also had Woolworth's and Green's plus a lot of small stores.

My best memory was taking the elevator at Read's which had operators that announced the floor and what was on it. I was sad when they announced they were closing the store and moving over into Lafayette Plaza. Before it closed, I went downtown and rode the elevators one last time. Jay

[Rich Cabeza]

I remember when Housatonic CC was in the old Singer Building back in the day right in that area.

[Stratford, Ct. Resident]

Originally Posted by Rich Cabeza

I remember when Housatonic CC was in the old Singer Building back in the day right in that area.

Yeah. For anyone that went there in the 80's or early 90's, they would keep their head down and sprint through the parking lot and the crosswalk into the school. To call it an unpleasant area at that time would be an understatement.

[elvisluvs]

My buddy does quite a bit of buying and selling up a block or 2 towards Stratford. Op must have smelled the smoke. I did take a class back when at housatonic; iirc that road to/ from I95 could've been the inspiration for Escape from New York. Bridgeport has improved substantially since. Iirc my nephew was born the day of a family's murder a block up from Barnum (early 90's). Scary stuff.

[elvisluvs]

I guess I'm getting forgetful- almost everytime I went to class- there were fires. I swear there were 10-15 torched buildings on the road from the highway to barnum.

[acebritty]

Originally Posted by Antlered Chamataka

Me and my brother had a little and scary Harold and Kumar situation, except that we are much better looking dudes

Anyway, we were doing wild trips all through CT, he was visiting me from Canada, and it was New Year's Day and we were dressed in awesome new clothes and shoes - two costly cameras with both of us - all other gadgets and cash. And worse, my brother was having the camera in his hand, snapping, it's one of those big professional cameras.

Finally decided to make a pitstop in Beardsley Zoo, coz we had been everywhere else. I lost the exit and suddenly found myself in Bridgeport's main street. I really, really wanted to take a U-turn and he advised me against taking a U on the main road, for it's cop-worthy.

So we took a right. And that brings us to Barnum Ave Here and there were pockets of amigos and brothers in groups, smoking... they looked scary. I drove on coz I was curious of the street, and he said the places looked like those in the game we used to play several hours as kids, Max Payne. Deserted buildings, shabby streets and grim factories. The dude started snapping pictures. And it got scarier from here, both places and the people.

I took a turn to avoid further trouble in a no-go zone and discover it was a Do Not Enter. And my car was stuck in a narrow road, trying to make a three point turn. And here, the plot thickens, the congregated brothers came towards the car... I rolled my windows down as they were talking to us expecting to be attacked and in a weird turn of events they told me how to get back to I-95. Phew.

And now I run into this, which is interesting:
Remington Arms, Bridgeport - Damned Connecticut

He said he's coming back in the Summer and we should venture to find a ghost one of the nights.

Why won't anyone gentrify this place? Such a wasteland and there's nothing on here. They can at least open a nuke plant or something.

sharp intake of breath as i placed cheese and salsa coated nacho down in anticipation of outcome. (not a post dinner snack, it IS dinner!!)

always enjoyed these pics. you may find something here

Central High School - Bridgeport History in Postcards

[SubieB4]

Wow those buildings are still around? i thought they would of knocked them down by now

[Stylo]

Originally Posted by acebritty

sharp intake of breath as i placed cheese and salsa coated nacho down in anticipation of outcome. (not a post dinner snack, it IS dinner!!)

always enjoyed these pics. you may find something here

Central High School - Bridgeport History in Postcards

Very cool, but also very sad.

The advent of the freeway and the modern automobile helped the country progress, but at the cost of so many great cities. Now we're left with antiseptic, character-less strip shopping and malls and so many rotting cities. That and the outsourcing of our workforce, and the open willingness of big businesses to abandon giant tracts of industry in so many cities.

In a time now when the younger generation wants downtowns, walkability, and character in the place they live - some cities are so far gone. Unfortunately a place like Bridgeport may never be like it once was. I do believe there is hope for other cities, like New Haven, to return to their former glory as we hopefully move away from awful sprawl-strip-chain-retail-ville.

I'm not anti-suburb by any means, but I'd rather see suburbs built around a functional urban center than the current model. When I shop, I try to avoid the malls and go local, and go places with sidewalks and traditional storefronts. I'm still a minority, but a growing one.