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The Greatest ‘What-If’ of the Century
If I-91 had joined I-95 in Bridgeport, New Haven would be
a very different place today
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Business New Haven
11/29/1999
By: Ivan M. Katz
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An observer looking at New Haven at the end of the last century would have seen a city that most of us would find flatly disgusting.
Yale was the exclusive, private preserve of white, predominantly Protestant males, amply served by surrounding taverns, fleshpots and culinary establishments that specialized in excess. Large sections of the city were made up of slums, the squalor of which beggars modern description.
The railroads ran under the ownership of J. Pierpont Morgan's heirs and assigns, belching smoke and providing thousands of jobs. The harbor, relentlessly focused on commerce, was an open sewer populated by wharf toughs and thugs. The sweatshop was in its heyday.
Discrimination against Jews, Catholics and blacks was endemic - and largely unquestioned. Women jealous of their virtue were not seen in public without escort or chaperone.
An observer looking at New Haven at the end of our century would note changes - but not enough of them. The city, so vibrant (if smelly) 100 years ago, proves the old Yogi Berra-ism that “The future ain't what it used to be.”
Is there one major policy decision which, if reversed, could have resulted in a city vastly different from the one we have today? There are several prime candidates, but one comes immediately to mind: If only I-91 had not come within 15 miles of New Haven...
Had the political influence of New Haven had been less - and that of Bridgeport been greater - the junction of Interstate Routes 91 and 95 from Meriden through Cheshire, Prospect and Bethany, connecting with the Route 8 right-of-way in or around Seymour and eventually connecting up with what was then the Connecticut Turnpike in Bridgeport would have made great sense. But at that time in the 1960s, of course, getting highways built was a measure of effective politics. No one ever thought a highway could be seen as anything other than an unrelieved boon.
Almost from the day it opened, the Connecticut Turnpike was a problem. Tolls and congestion made it everyone's local interstate nightmare. But I-91 was different: It was free of tolls and it was largely uncongested. I-91 was pivotal in opening up the communities north of New Haven to the scourge of suburbanization. New Haven's population - and much of its industry - moved north with the interstate. The push to the east past the Quinnipiac River Bridge only came later with the condo boom of the 1970s and 1980s.
Shifting the I-91/I-95 merge to Bridgeport would not have entirely prevented the suburban sprawl north of New Haven. But had I-91 taken a turn to the west in Meriden, the northern suburbs really would not have opened up until at least the mid-1970s, when the environmental movement was reaching its apogee.
The time bought would have curtailed dramatically the suburban growth we see today. Had the I-91 interchange been moved 20 exits to the west on I-95, much of North Haven would still look like Woodbridge, and the folks who took off from New Haven for parts north might have had a better inducement to stick around.
Before I-91 was opened, a commute from Cheshire to downtown New Haven involved either Whitney Avenue all the way or the Wilbur Cross Parkway into Dixwell Avenue. It was a trek only the bravest undertook. Once I-91 opened up, it was no longer an issue.
Had I-91 been moved to Bridgeport, the biggest identifiable traffic jam in New Haven County - the I-91/I-95 merge - would have been Bridgeport's problem. Everyone concentrates on the Q Bridge, but the Q-Bridge is not the real problem, only a symptom. The real problem is two major interstate highways coming together at an interchange designed by an idiot.
If Interstate 91 gave people a means to flee the city for the suburbs, the city of New Haven's handling of school integration in the mid-1960s gave them a reason to leave. And the riots that shook the city in the mid-'60s sealed it.
But that's a problem for another day. Suffice it to note that the city's deplorable response to the need to desegregate its schools remains the saddest chapter in the city's history. Its effects, like segregated schools themselves, are very much with us to this day.
Step back for a moment to 1966. I-91 has opened only the year before. The schools in New Haven are in turmoil. Mr. & Mrs. Joe Six Pack are confronted with the following scenario: New homes are available in newly built subdivisions out in places like Hamden or North Haven for about $28,000, with FHA and VA mortgages available at about 3.5 percent. The schools out there are at least perceived to be better than New Haven's, and with the new highway opening you can get from Hamden to your job at Winchester in about as much time as it took to get there from your four-room apartment in Fair Haven.
So Mr. & Mrs. Six Pack did what just about everyone who could afford it did: They moved. The unscrupulous real-estate practices of the day made fear the motivating factor; when the Six Packs moved and the blockbusters moved in, New Haven became a city of the rich and very poor, with an increasingly small middle class to buffer the two.
Although the city's handling of the schools crisis in the early 1960s could not have been worse, the effects of its bungling were exacerbated by the ready availability of new housing stock up the I-91 corridor. When people had a reason to leave and the means to go, they fled by the thousands. And the majority of those who stayed would have gone had they been able to do afford to do so.
The law allows us to lobby our legislators to locate the road elsewhere; once having made their decision, the law does not allow us to call in the Connecticut Air National Guard to bomb the damned road into rubble. Perhaps we ought to speak to our legislators about that. BNH
Ivan M. Katz is an attorney in New Haven.
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