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MIDDLETOWN
IN
MOTION
NORTH
END
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• INSIDE
THE
NORTH
END
- A COMMUNITY
PROFILE
-Video
produced by the da Vinci Club
• HISTORY
OF
THE
NORTH
END
OF
MIDDLETOWN
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a community profile video
history of the north end
Laura
Seigel, Author
Middletown's history begins in 1651, when
Puritan settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony founded the
settlement of Mattabeseck, on the land currently encompassing
Middletown, Cromwell, Middlefield, Portland, East Hampton, and
(part of) Berlin. Three years later, 31 "taxable persons"
lived at Mattabeseck, most residing close to the Meeting House
which had been constructed at the north end of the current
Main Street. The settlement was re-named Middletown in 1661
(according to one source this occurred as early as 1654),
acknowledging its location as the midpoint between the
Hartford and Saybrook settlements. While its founders had
initially designated Middletown's north end marked by the
Meeting House as its center, the city's first century saw
residents and businesses beginning to shift towards the
central and southern sections of Main Street.
By 1790, Middletown was the biggest city in
Connecticut, and its salmon fisheries, livestock farms,
textile mills, and brownstone quarries (located in what is
presently the city of Portland) shaped its economy. During the
late 18th century Middletown's economy flourished, as
merchants traded extensively with the West Indies. When trade
with the West Indies later became centralized around Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore after 1810, industry in
Middletown became manufacturing-based. During this period
Middletown emerged as the most prominent manufacturer of
elastic webbing (as used in the production of suspenders) in
the world. This turn to manufacturing prompted the influx of
various immigrant groups, drawn to Middletown by the prospect
of employment in factories seeking cheap labor. The mid 19th
century also saw a great number of African Americans migrating
to Middletown, as the state of Connecticut banned slavery in
1830. Middletown's strong economy attracted freed slaves
seeking employment, though they faced considerable
discrimination upon arrival.
These new populations found housing in the
tenements of Middletown's North End, which was redeveloped in
the 19th century and again became heavily populated and
commercially active. While tenements were constructed on Ferry
and Green Street to house the first waves of Irish immigrants
in the mid to late 19th century, the construction of a
railroad station marking the intersection of two major railway
lines also brought significant growth to the North End. This
station prompted the constructions of both Rapallo Avenue,
which made train access easier, as well as two nearby hotels.
The first wave of Irish immigrants arrived in
Middletown between 1820 and 1845, and was primarily composed
of Irish Catholics who found work in the brownstone quarries.
Between 1846 and 1900, another wave of Irish immigrants
arrived in Middletown, as the "Great Potato Blight" left
farmers and other agricultural workers desperate for a new
life. These immigrants found housing in North End tenements
and, by 1880, composed 30% of the North End's population. In
her A Pictorial History of Middletown, Liz Warner explains
that these immigrants acquired more economic stability when,
in an effort to boost the economy in the 1870s, Middletown
banks offered them loans and credit which enabled them to
purchase homes or commercial properties. This prospect of
homeownership prompted many Irish, who accounted for a third
of the neighborhood's population in 1880, to move out of the
North End tenements. By the 1890s most of these Irish had left
the North End to build their own homes in other parts of the
city. New, southern European immigrant populations would
become the North End's new residents, beginning a cyclical
pattern of movement for the neighborhood; as the older
immigrant groups became more economically successful and
assimilated to a new life, they sought better housing outside
of the North End, allowing the next wave of immigrant groups
to settle there. As Warner describes in the case of the Irish,
"The assimilation of Irish-Americans accelerated with the
arrival of the new immigrants, leaving the Irish as "old
stock" in a town that now included Germans, Swedes, Jews, and
Poles."
After the Irish, the most prominent group of
immigrants to arrive in Middletown were Italian, coming from
both northern Italy and the town of Mellili, Sicily. These
Italians began to arrive in the 1880s, after, supposedly, a
Mellilian who had come to the United States to manage a
three-legged boy performer for Barnum and Bailey encouraged
his brother -Angelo Magnano- to immigrate as well. Magnano
became Middletown's first Sicilian immigrant, and in turn
encouraged Melliliian friends and family to follow. These
immigrants moved into the North End east of Main Street,
essentially transforming this neighborhood into an
Italian-American enclave, or a 'new Mellili.' As Warner
states: "It was a self-sufficient community, where families
grew their vegetables in their front-lawn gardens, spoke
Italian to their neighbors and children, and preserved the old
ways of Mellili." Italian-Americans would become the most
prominent ethnic group in Middletown, by 1920 accounting for
more than half of North End residents east of Main Street, and
by 1955 owning half of Middletown's groceries and a third of
its gas stations. While Italian-Americans did move out of the
North End after becoming more successful-as the
historically-rooted cycle went-many remained in the
neighborhood because it had become so heavily marked with an
Italian identity. As Warner notes, the Italian presence in
Middletown and the North End remains strong: "...With the help
of Italian fraternal organizations such as the Sons of Italy
and the Garibaldi Society, as well as the church [of San
Sebastian, located on Washington Street and modeled after a
church in Mellili], subsequent generations have maintained
their Italian identity, and perpetuated Melillese traditions."
Today the North End neighborhood east of Main Street
(including Ferry Street, Green Street, and Rapallo Avenue)
remains 52% Italian American.
In addition to these primary ethnic groups,
Middletown received many African Americans during World War
II, who emigrated from the South seeking those jobs which many
Middletown residents had vacated in order to serve in the
military. By 1970, 3,500 African Americans lived in
Middletown, accounting for 10% of the entire population.
Middletown's population continued to diversify as its Hispanic
population doubled between 1970 and 1990, while hundreds of
Southeast Asians settled in Middletown during the 1980s.
In the year 2000, the U.S. Census bureau
documented Middletown's population at 43,167 residents, 9,954
of which identified as Italian/Italian-American. While the
North End (which encompasses the entire area between
Washington Street and the Arrigoni Bridge, stretching from Rt.
3 in the west to the Connecticut River in the east) and
specifically the Ferry St/Green St/Rapallo Avenue neighborhood
east of Main Street, is no longer an exclusively Italian
enclave, its history as such, and the historic role it played
in Middletown's manufacturing era drive its preservation as a
residential neighborhood. Largely due to residents' objections
to the continued urban renewal projects that were destroying
sections of historic Main Street, the North End escaped those
1950s urban redevelopment projects-funded by Harry S. Truman's
Fair Deal plan, which supported urban renewal and social
improvement projects nationwide -that eliminated the historic
residential neighborhoods of Middletown's South End in the
interest of developing a downtown commercial district. Thus,
the North End remains as Middletown's last truly urban
residential neighborhood. The most extensive housing
redevelopment project currently underway in Middletown, on the
North side of Ferry Street, seeks to preserve its identity as
such.
"The Origins of Middletown, Conn." From The
Middler: Newsletter of the Society of Middletown First
Settlers Descendants. Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 2005. p. 8.
Ibid.
Warner, Liz. A Pictorial History of Middletown.
The Greater Middletown Preservation Trust: 1990. p. 19.
Warner, p. 78.
The Middletown Report, Yale Urban Design
Workshop, 1998, p. 5.
Warner, p. 9.
Lindsay, p. 18.
The Middletown Report, p. 6.
Warner, p. 78.
Ibid., p. 99.
Warner, p. 78.
Lindsay, Rachel Wyatt. 46 Ferry Imag(in)ed:
Growing Community and
Change in the North End. Wesleyan University
Thesis, 2005. p. 17.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 101.
Lindsay, p. 17.
Warner, p. 112.
Warner, p. 113.
Warner, p. 78.
Lindsay, p. 18.
Warner, p. 114.
Taken from a personal interview with Ricardo
Morris.
The Middletown Report, p. 6.
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