Downtown Westport

click on this picture to see the same corner today

Ask me to imagine Westport and this is what comes into my mind. This corner. It looks today much like it did in the 40s and 50s. The bank, pushing it's way into the Post Road, and the Y shyly peeking out from behind it.

I always considered the bank to be the real seat of power in Westport, not the Town Hall. For many years they were the same: the Bank President served as First Selectman. My father knew them both.
I knew early on that money was power. When I arranged the heirarchies of my doll-house families, the banker always got the big house.

The Westport YMCA was a unique building, built in Tudor style with half timbered upper stories, it would have been more at home in Flushing than in Westport. It was our crown jewel.
I never belonged to the Y, As a girl, it was "not for me" - but it was not unfamiliar. I attended Miss Comer's Dance class which was held in the second floor ballroom .
Aah, Miss Comers. She was elegant, in velvet gown, and her sister, Miss Elsie, playing the piano on the stage. We were her students, in prom finery, and we learned to foxtrot and waltz, to samba and tango, to jitterbug. Miss Comer polished Westport's young elite. We learned the etiquette of formal dances with dance cards, bows and curtseys. Unfortunately, none of it stuck.
. Larry remembers going across the street to the Tally Ho for cokes while waiting for his parents to pick him up; I remember dinner parties there preceding our dance leassons. I remember the excitement of climbing the Y steps in the early evening, in my long gown and white gloves, and feeling so grown-up and sophisticated!

The Westport Fire Dept. was housed in a wing of the Y. I remember field trips there. There were two bays for the trucks, and a pole to slide down from the dormitory upstairs.
(There was a second firehouse in Saugatuck, which would have served my neighborhood).
Besides the small corps of firemen, there were also volunteers. In the days before emergency radio communications, the location of fires was blown on a whistle at the fire station in a three numeral code, which could be heard all over town. We knew the numbers for our immediate neighborhood by heart and had a complete list tacked to the cellar door so that we could look them up as we heard them. If a neighborhood number was called, we'd be off chasing the fire on our bikes. I remember several grass fires -- oh! the excitement. One fire we did not see happened at night: a truck burning on the Post Road. It was carrying a load of rubber cement. When the firemen opened the back of the truck it exploded, killing several firemen. It was well discussed around our dinner table. My father knew the firemen. After that, fires did not seem as exciting or attractive. The fire whistle was put to another use. It was blown every afternoon at 5 pm. signaling to the town's children that it was time to go home.

Fine Arts Theater, Post Road

Across the Post Road from the bank, one could, until recent years, find the Fine Arts Movie Theater. Before George Comden arrived to turn it into a movie house, it had been a meeting hall, and the town meetings were held there.

During the war (World War II) George ran Bond Drives from the theater. He had many show business connections in New York; stars who would come out for the Bond shows. Celeste Holm and other members of the Oklahoma! cast came out from New York, so did Mary Margaret McBride and Clifton Fademan. Col. Stoopnagle, the comic, also entertained. There was an auction of really good donated prizes. Stephen Dohanoes and Harold Von Schmitt donated paintings. To this day we have a 1943 edition of the Encylopedia Britanica, won at a bond show auction.
Larry grew up in the theater. He knew every corner, knew the catwalk overhead where the lights were changed, was good at changing the marquee. When George sold the theater to a New York chain in the early '50s, Larry continued to work for the new owners. He says today that he got his fill of movies there, and now avoids movie theaters when he can.

Larry's mother, Charlotte Comden, was the executive secretary to the publisher of the Town Crier, Westport's newspaper at the time. The offices were also on the Post Road, just beyond the bank.

Post Road at Imperial Ave

Continue up the Post Road; pass the old town hall (with police station and jail cell in the basement, it was the destination of many school field trips. The naughtiest boys got the privilege of being locked in the jail cell -- "Just so you'll see what it's like!"

In front of the town hall was the Honor Roll, a wooden billboard with the names of all the Westporters fallen in WWII. Stephen Dohanoes painted it for a Sat. Eve. Post cover.

Pass the Post office and you'll come to Imperial Ave. At that corner is the former Lewis Funeral Home, a building that was and is still used as a Masonic Hall. My father was a serious Mason and attended meetings in that second floor hall, and was buried from the funeral parlor on the first floor.

Across Imperial Ave stands the building which once housed the Finast Food Market -- Westport's first Super Market! Crude in comparison to today's Super Markets (with self scanning registers and banks and babysitting and dry cleaners all under one roof.) But there were carts and the housewives could wander the aisles and pick out the items themselves.
I remember shopping before the Finast came to town -- at Peter's Bridge Market or at Kenneth's Compo Grocery, on the way to Compo Beach. In both, you encountered a counter immediately inside the door. You gave your list to Peter, or to Kenneth, or to one of their clerks, who would get the items and bring them to the counter. They would figure the total of your order on the paper bag (adding the numbers in their heads - a far cry from the clerks of today who depend on a machine to total the order and give out the change). My mother always put her groceries "on the bill" -- on credit. We took our groceries home ourselves, but Charles' Food Market downtown also delivered.

Main Street

"Downtown" meant the first two blocks of Main Street, which began at the Post Road and ran north eventually to the Merritt Parkway. There were stores and other business establishments in those first two blocks, There were few chains, most were family run businesses. It was all very personal and friendly. We knew all the shopkeepers, they knew us. They were friends of our parents, and their children were in school with us. Only the 10¢ store was a chain, and, although it was my favorite store downtown, I never knew who owned it.

It was a tradition in our family to go downtown every Saturday. With our quarter allowance in hand, we'd head for the 10¢ store. The store itself was dark and musty, with overhead fans and counters filled with treasure! I remember buying little plastic horses there and taking them home to play with under the trees, my heart filled with love for my new little horse. Eventually I had a quite herd, and fashioned a stable for them from a wooden packing box.
In 5th grade, there was a fad of trading playing cards. Every deck came with a spare card or two, blank on the back, which could be used to fill in when one of the playing cards was lost. And there was always the joker. Our parents let us take these, and sometimes would donate a full pack to the game. At school, during recess we'd sort and stack and compare and trade.
And then one Saturday, I noticed, in one of the bins in the 10¢ store, packaged "trading" cards -- with blank backs!! I bought a set, and waited excitedly for Monday when we'd be trading at school. What an impact these new blanks made! I was not the only little girl with these new cards, and for that week, those of us who had the new cards were king of the heap. By the next week, nearly everyone had visited the 10¢ store and stocked up on these cards. The bubble had burst. It was not the same.

Willowbrook Cemetery

Beyond the stores, well into the residential part of Main St. we find Willowbrook Cemetery. It is the town cemetery, and non-denominational. It has been in use since the early 1800's and most of the town's leading names are represented there. There are 3 metal tombstones. They look exactly like stone, but have a metallic ring when you knock on them. There is a tradition of leaving pebbles on tombstones. I also have a tradition of knocking on metal tombstones. Every time I go to Willowbrook, even now, I look up the metal tombstones and knock on them.
My parents are buried in Willowbrook, so are my godparents, as are the parents of most of my friends. I look them up each time I am in town.
It seemed so appropriate for us to buy a plot there, and we have a lovely one, right on the the road, and in view of Larry's old house. I want to erect a stone saying,

"We couldn't afford to live here"






Larry grew up on Maplewood Avenue, which is just beyond the cemetery. The cemetery was his playground. The area where our plot is today was his ballfield back then.
Larry and his friends often took their dates up to the cemetery, and always, one would "hang" from one of the trees or leap out from behind a tombstone, scaring the girl into her date's arms. It was better (and cheaper) than a scarey movie! One large tombstone, "Julia", was horizontal and soaked up the sun all day. In the evening it reflected the warmth and was a favorite rendez-vous point in the cemetery.