By Thomas Broderick
During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s the state of Connecticut disastrously gutted its cities by ramming urban freeways through their cores. Interstate 91 and Interstate 84 in Hartford, Interstate 95 (originally known as the Connecticut Turnpike) and Route 8 in Bridgeport, and Interstate 95 and the Oak Street Connector in New Haven all destroyed vibrant neighborhoods in the name of easy suburban commuting, “progress,” and—often explicitly —racial and economic segregation. But perhaps no Connecticut municipality was as impacted as the midsized city of New Britain, which has three highways carving up its traditional development pattern. The people of New Britain did not accept the gutting of their city lying down, and its past opposition could inspire a movement to remove these highways in the future.
Most of us living in Connecticut today were born after autocentric design became the norm—after the construction of highways, after the razing of countless buildings for parking lots, after the conversion of streets into stroads—and there’s almost no living memory of what our cities and communities looked like beforehand. But the decision to hand over our built environment to cars was not inevitable and was controversial as it happened.
New Britain, a city of only 82,000 in 1960, somehow has three highways running through it: Interstate 84 and State Routes 72 and 9. And while Interstate 84 is mostly on the outskirts of the city, Routes 72 and 9 run directly through its downtown and core neighborhoods. A diverse coalition of city residents spent 20 years opposing these disastrous infrastructure projects, and although their efforts failed, the push reminds us that nothing is ever set in stone.
New Britain’s anti-highway mobilization began early. A Hartford Courant article from May 20th, 1952 described a 400 person meeting at General Haller Post Hall to oppose multiple highway plans through the city. Alderman Frank E. Zapatka argued that building a highway through the center of the city would be like “erecting a ‘Wall of China’” and would forever divide neighborhoods. Highlighting the city’s longtime immigrant roots, Dr. Roman F. Lekston delivered remarks opposing the highways in English, Italian, and Polish. Similarly, Casimer Majewiez argued in Polish that the highways would “divide the Polish colony here,” and former Alderman Stanley Sadowski added that the highway would decimate property. “No matter where they put the highway, you would be hit hard,” he stated.
In the weeks following this 1952 meeting, Alderman Vincent Kolowski and an anti-highway group distributed 7,000 postcards protesting routes through the city. These efforts led New Britain’s Common Council to join the fight, arguing that entire streets would be wiped out along with 148 buildings for just one of the plans. The potential financial and human ramifications were clear to city residents at the time. Former New Britain Mayor Henry Gwiazda pointed out in a 1953 meeting that “persons whose property is near the expressway will suffer a decrease in value but will have nobody to turn to. Every taxpayer in the city will be affected by higher taxes…and hundreds of families forced out of their homes would be unable to find tenements.”
Incredibly, the same debates were still raging in the 1960s, when the plans to ram Route 72 directly through the heart of the city became clear. In a September 1961 meeting of Stanley Street residents, Alderman John J. Moskus argued that “1100 or more homes would be wrecked” by the plan. Within a week of that meeting, the Hartford Courant published a story claiming that “the protest by St. Andrew’s parishioners against a new highway going through their neighborhood was mushrooming into a city-wide demonstration.” Eight years later in March 1969 former Mayor John L. Sullivan argued in another public forum that “New Britainites may as well say goodbye to the city as they now know it if the corridor [Route 72] becomes a reality.” He further added that “there is no need at all for a corridor to knife into the city and take from the grand list approximately $16 million…the tax revenue loss will be from here on in.”
Unfortunately, almost two decades of organizing did not stop the highways. Highway Commissioner G. Albert Hill and his supporters would build Interstate 84 and Routes 72 and 9 through New Britain. New Britain would lose 10,000 residents in the decade after the construction of its urban highways, and the city is still below its peak 1970s population.
Today, a new generation of New Britain residents are living with the legacy of those fateful decisions in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The destruction of wide swathes of the city’s most valuable land means less tax revenue for schools and services, not just in absolute terms but in the opportunity cost of what could have been built on that valuable land, nevermind the decline in adjacent property values. These highways also incentivized property owners to tear down buildings for surface parking; our research at Connecticut Parking Reform found that 29% of downtown New Britain is parking (which is an undercount, as we only considered one floor of a garage). Urban highways bring more pollution to the city’s air (from tailpipe emissions and tire particulates), and they encouraged local street design dedicated to speeding cars instead of the city’s people.
Despite these disastrous state-level decisions, New Britain is still an incredible city. It has wonderful museums, vibrant immigrant communities, and is doubling down on its traditional development pattern with transit-oriented housing and safe streets initiatives. As the historical record shows, nothing in history is inevitable. People at the time fought for a different future, and although they lost their struggle, they can inspire us today. New Britain has urban highways now, but it does not have to have them forever.
Thomas Broderick is a Connecticut educator, Trumbull Town Councilor, and co-founder of Connecticut Parking Reform.
