I Remember Downtown

Unionville, CT, had everything you needed. Then they redeveloped it.

In my old age, I’m having a bit of a nostalgia attack. I’m also happy that history seems to be repeating itself. There seems to be a push toward making small municipalities, self-sufficient. Urbanism in small towns. I like it. I wish that New Urbanism had happened to Unionville, CT. That town, the one I grew up in, was like that at one time. My first memories, my childhood, and my teen-age years, were spent growing up in the idyllic post-war American suburbia. I grew up in a typical 1950s/1960s housing development that was on the Unionville side of the tracks, literally, from Farmington, which was where all the rich people lived.

The Levittown-style development called the Highlands, was about two miles from the center of Unionville, and about five miles from the center of Farmington. Farmington and Unionville are one town with two districts, the Farmington district, and the Unionville district, called the Town Of Farmington. I know it’s kind of strange, but it’s Connecticut.

There is no county government in Connecticut either. It’s state and municipal. If the towns are too small to support a school system, they have regional schools. Lewis Mills Regional High School, and Northwest Regional High School, come to mind. I knew kids that went to Lewis Mills from church. I also knew a couple of kids from NRHS, when I worked with them on a tobacco farm, when I was 15-16.

If the towns were too small to fund a police department, they were assigned “Resident State Troopers.” Farmington had, and still has, its own police department, with the headquarters being in Unionville. The new police station is on the other side of the river, and pretty much isolated. In the old police station, which was in the basement of the old town hall, if there were no prisoners being held in the holding cells, the cops used to let us go back and play in the jail. We got to know the cops, but even more importantly, the cops got to know us. They could tell who were the protentional trouble makers down the road, and whom they needed to keep a close eye on.

Most of the shopping as well as the town offices, were in the Unionville district. Farmington had a small downtown area, with a privately owned, very expensive, grocery store. I worked there when I was in high school. The owner treated his employees like dirt. There were a couple of restaurants, a drug store, and Miss Porter’s School (a private girls 8-12 “finishing school,” where if you have to ask how much the tuition is, you can’t afford it), and some professional offices. That’s about it. If you wanted anything else, you had to head to Unionville. Yes, I know. The Farmington town offices were in Unionville, not Farmington, even though Unionville was part of Farmington. It’s kind of like, “Who’s On First?” The beautiful Victorian-style old Town Hall was built in 1901, and torn down in 1972, as part of the “Redevelopment” plan (sarcasm quotes).

Back in the good old days, downtown Unionville was quite walkable. Everything you needed, as long as it didn’t have a lot of frills, was within walking distance. It was typical of any of the hundreds of mill towns, that lined the various rivers in New England, as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

At one time, there had been a dam up the river, and a canal from that dam, ran though the back yard of many of the houses. They were small to medium size houses, that were built by the various factories, for their workers’ families. Many of those families were Irish, Italian, Slovak, and Polish immigrants who came to America, to work in those plants. In the summer, kids used to swim in that canal. I never heard any stories about anyone drowning. Most of the mills used water power from that canal to drive their machinery. Unionville even had its own hydroelectric plant. It was right next to the elementary school, called Union School.

The dam was destroyed during the Flood Of 1955, that decimated a large portion of New England. Several factories closed, throwing a lot of people out of work. Some families left and started over somewhere else. The ones that stayed, found other lines of work. The town didn’t die. It just slowly morphed into a car-dependent, bedroom community of Hartford. Over the years, the remains of the canal dried up. Now if you look closely, you can see some slight indentations in the ground, where it used to be.

Before “Redevelopment” took its toll, School Street and South Main Street, had most of the businesses and professional offices. There was the First National grocery store, which was a 1950s/1960s version of a super market. It was slightly larger than your typical Trader Joe’s. There were a couple of small neighborhood grocery stores too, as well as a butcher shop called Meatown. There was Hart’s Five And Ten, Parson’s Hardware, the Ryan Pharmacy, Frank’s Barber Shop with a hairdresser shop next door. There was Dubow’s Department Store, which sold mostly work clothes. Unionville still had two working factories at the time.

Across the street was the Knights Of Columbus hall. Cromack’s Mobil gas station was on one of the corners of the five-way intersection, that was the entrance point to the downtown business district. Mr. Cromack’s daughter Joanne, was married to local boy, Dick McAuliffe, who played shortstop, for the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox baseball teams. My father was a US History teacher. He had Dick McAuliffe as a student in 8th grade. When the Tigers won the World Series in 1968, the town had a parade in his honor. Dick and Joanne led the parade, in the back seat of a convertible. Pretty much the entire town, turned out for the event.

Down South Main Street toward the bridge over the river, was the Hotel Worthy, which was known for its fine dining; the Olde Towne Grille bar and restaurant, which was where the locals hung out; and dentist and doctor offices, and apartments, on the second and third floors of most of the buildings, that lined both sides of the street. At the end of the street, right at the iron arch bridge over the Farmington River, was the Myrtle Mills department store, on both sides of the street. The part of the store on the right, was in an old factory building. It was known as Myrtle Mills Annex. They were connected by a tunnel, that ran underneath the road.

Up at the corner of South Main and School Street, across from the Mobil station, was a convenience store. At one time, that space had been another drug store. There were also several lunch counter places near the old factory buildings. As a small boy, I have fleeting memories about going to one called Reynold's with my father. Myrtle Mills had a lunch counter too. They are now all long gone. I still have memories of Myrtle Mills’ banana splits.

Along School Street, there was Cliff Fontaine’s barber shop with its dark wood paneling, the smell of bay rum and hair tonic, and a huge supply of Mad Magazines. There were also Playboys in the locked drawer if you were old enough. I think old enough was 13? Yes, we did live in different times back then.

Next door was Flynn’s Rexall Drug Store. It also had dark wood paneling. Old Man Flynn, the owner and pharmacist, as we used to call him, hated kids. However, he had a soda fountain, where you could get a real Coke made with Coke syrup and seltzer. The cost? 10 cents. Old Man Flynn made us pay in advance. As soon as we finished, and he was listening for the slurping sound that you make, when the straw is sucking up the last bit of liquid. He would come out from behind the drug counter and ask,

“Anything else?”

“ That’s it. Thank you Mr. Flynn.”

“Get out!!!!”

Like I said, he hated kids. However, he was always willing to take our money.

Like many of those old, small, New England factory towns, if you lived in downtown Unionville at that time, you didn’t need a car. Everything you needed was within walking distance. One of my elementary school teachers, Miss Hitchcock, grew up in Unionville. She lived in the same house where she was born. It was a half a mile walk from the school, and a quarter mile from downtown, the supermarket, and the various professional offices. She was one of many examples of Unionville residents, who had no need for a car. A lot of the students at Union School, used to walk to school. Some lived close enough, that they would go home for lunch.

Back in the 1950s/1960s, people still went to church. There was and still is, the Congregational Church on another one of the corners of that famous five-way intersection. Originally, that intersection had a roundabout. They took out the roundabout, and replaced it with traffic signals, sometime in the early 1960s. That was the first part of Redevelopment. Across the street by the cemetery, was the Episcopal Church. It was torn down during Redevelopment. It’s former site is still an empty lot. The old stone Methodist Church, was along School Street, about a block from the major intersection. It still stands, but is now a youth center. The old public library next door, is now the Unionville Museum.

If you went down leafy Main Street, with lots of old Victorian houses, the former residences of the factory owners, you would come to St. Mary’s Church, built in 1885. That was the church I knew quite well as an altar boy. Sometime around the year 2000, the foundation of the church started to settle on one side. The church was deemed unsafe, and closed. Soon after, it was torn down. A new church was built in 2004, across the street from where the old church once stood. That space where the former church was located, is an empty lot.

Many mornings either my mom, or Mrs. Leszuk, who lived down the road from us, would drive her son Mike and me, to serve daily mass at 7:30 AM. After Mass, we would walk to Union School, a couple of blocks from the church. We would take the school bus home. The school knew there were several altar boys serving Mass so our tardiness was excused. St. Mary’s didn’t have its own school.

The housing development where I lived, was about two miles from Unionville center. I used to ride my bike, along with my friends, along Route 4, Farmington Avenue, from the Highlands, as the development was called, to go hang out in the center of town. Yes, we used to ride along Route 4, a major state route with lots of cars, with no helmets. Bicycle helmets? What’s that? We didn’t know helmets existed. I don’t think they did. I don’t remember anyone ever getting hit by a car. When you spend time riding a bicycle on a fairly busy two lane road, you learn how to ride with traffic. Of course back then, nobody used seatbelts or car seats either. Then there was riding in the back of a pickup truck…

In the late 1960s/early 1970s, Unionville went through what was called, Redevelopment. What they did, was tear everything down, and turn downtown Unionville, into a large parking lot, with a few scattered businesses and profession offices, located here and there. Parson’s Hardware relocated on the other side of the river, right next to the bridge.

The left side building of Myrtle Mills, which was a department store selling merchandise tailored toward a mostly working class clientele, had a great cobbler shop, bakery, and the best phonograph record prices anywhere, escaped the wrecking ball, and is now a bunch of little stores and carry out food places, accessible from the outside. Most of the interior of the old Myrtle Mills building, is closed off. The former section called Myrtle Mills Annex, on the other side of the street in an old factory building, and was where the record store was located, was torn down. The tunnel under the road connecting both sections, no longer exists. Same with the old, ornate Town Hall. The old K of C Hall, gone; the Hotel Worthy, gone; basically, the whole Downtown Unionville, gone, gone, gone!

The results of Redevelopment? There are a couple of banks, a Dunkin’ Donuts, and a McDonald’s. The eye doctor and the dentist offices relocated in one of the randomly placed new buildings, that were scattered around the downtown area, which is a giant parking lot on either side of South Main Street. The Old Towne Grille relocated, but went out of business in the 1990s. There is a pizza/Italian restaurant called George’s. That’s about it. All of the other former small businesses are gone. The second to the last working factory, Pioneer Steel Ball, is now luxury condos. The last one, Charles House and Company, a former felt factory, is in the process of being converted into housing, but first it has to be cleaned up as a biohazard. Unionville and Farmington proper, are now basically bedroom communities of Hartford, with horrible public transportation.

At one time, you could get a regularly scheduled bus in and out of Hartford. Today, bus service from Unionville to Farmington Center, and/or Hartford, is marginal. There is only hourly weekday service from Hartford to Unionville, and the last bus leaving Hartford, is around 6:40 pm. There is no Saturday or Sunday bus service. You really do need a car if you live there now. Either that, or you just have everything delivered, by someone driving a car or truck. Redevelopment was an amazing thing. Walkability became car dependability.

Small town urbanism. That’s what Unionville was, before the so-called “Re-development.” I find it interesting, that there are now New Urbanism communities popping up in rural areas. Kentlands and King Farm in the DC area come to mind. They are both well-designed 15 minute walkable communities. Both of them were built on former farm land.

Why don’t we take a town like Unionville, that was “Redeveloped” into a debacle in the middle to late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and re-“Redevelop” them back to their self-sustaining, car-optional former selves? Maybe we would see a bunch of kids riding their bikes on Route 4 into the center of town again, and then head under the bridge, to go swimming in the Farmington River—clothes and all! By the time you rode your bicycle home, you’d be dry. Your mother wouldn’t know that you had gone swimming in the river. Ah, the good old days…