Mayberry Village
Mayberry Village is an area in east central East Hartford, Connecticut, US.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
The village is home to Labor Field, which contains a baseball park, and to Franklin H. Mayberry Elementary School.
The original neighborhood, bordered by Home Terrace, Highview, Edgewood and Arbutus streets, was called Laurel Park Heights, named after the trolley park that was located where Sunset Hills was developed in the late 50s. Old trolley tracks can still be seen in the Hockanum River Gorge. To the north is Burnside Avenue. To the south is Chester Street. To the west are other residential neighborhoods. To the east is Wickham Park, mostly in Manchester, Connecticut.
History[edit]
Mayberry Village was built in 1941 on what was the Cannon family farm, to house the influx of people who worked at Pratt and Whitney and other defense industries in Connecticut. The upper section of mostly multiple-unit construction was built first and then the "New Village", single and duplex units, was built. The complex was named after Doctor Mayberry, a local physician who was killed while crossing railroad tracks under Burnham Street in East Hartford. In 1956, the units were offered for sale to those people living within them. Many of these families did buy their houses and rented the other apartments to the people who continued to live there.
In the earlier days, Mayberry Village was a cohesive community, managed by the Housing Authority out of the Community Building. On the first of the month, children would carry envelopes to the rental office to pay the families' rent. The village was a safe place and there was no fear of robbery. In most families, the father was a defense worker, often a veteran of World War II, and the mother stayed home during the day. The houses were occupied alphabetically - the Gompers lived between the Flanagans and the Johnsons. When the units were eventually sold to the occupants, for the duplexes if both parties were interested, the buyer was determined by a coin flip. During the day, many peddlers came through: Jake, on the vegetable truck; a popcorn vendor pedaling a bicycle cart; the ice cream truck; bread and milk delivery; a rag man weighing and buying cloth; and the insurance man once a month to put a stamp in the insurance booklet after payment.
During the winter, people would ice skate on the cove, and in the summer kids played in Labor Field and other fields and woods around the village. Labor Field had been a victory garden during World War II and still had vegetables popping out of the ground in the early years. Both sides of the Hock were all thick woods, up in the Laurel Park area and across from Bergren Dairy, and full of kids in the summer. When the 5:00 whistle went off at the Case Brothers Mill on Burnside Avenue, across from Wickham (Mrs. Wickham was still alive and lived in the house on the property that is now gone), the woods emptied of kids running home for supper.
One of the small houses in the New Village served as a local library until it burned in a fire. The Community Building, now the Larson Center (John B. Larson, the US Congressman, grew up in the New Village), housed the rental office and two second grade classrooms upstairs. There was an auditorium upstairs with a stage that showed cowboy movies and cartoons on Saturday morning, and was used for Sunday morning mass by St. Rose parish. During the week, the auditorium was used by the second graders in the building as a gym and meeting place. Downstairs was a repair shop where kids could sign out lawnmowers and walk them home to cut the grass. On Halloween, kids in costume would meet first at the Community Building and have a parade through the streets of the village before going for trick or treat.
The smallest kids walked to school for the Little Red School House, which eventually burned down, and St. Isaac Jogues Church was built on that location. There were three rooms in the school, a large one for kindergarten, and two smaller rooms for first grade. Teachers were Miss Lupi and Mrs Weiss for kindergarten, Miss Gruber and Miss Yates for first grade. Miss Lupi died in the middle of the 1949 school year and was replaced by Mrs. Charlotte Cote, who lived in the Village even after retirement. Miss Otis was Principal, a role she continued at both Mayberry school when it was built and then Woodland School. After second grade, children walked to Woodland School, until Mayberry School was built.[citation needed]
Present day[edit]
Mayberry Village is a neighborhood off of Burnside avenue. Much of the lower section of Cannon Road and Woodlawn Circle have been purchased by landlords attempting to renovate and improve the quality of the area. Many of the properties are owned by a conglomerate of 5-6 landlords who are in close communication.
References[edit]
- ↑ https://books.google.nl/books?id=_sriAAAAMAAJ&dq=mayberry+village+high+school&source=gbs_navlinks_s
- ↑ Club, East Hartford Rotary (March 27, 2009). "East Hartford". Arcadia Publishing – via Google Books.
- ↑ "EAST HARTFORD SEEKS IMPROVED MAYBERRY VILLAGE - Hartford Courant". webcache.googleusercontent.com.
- ↑ "Mayberry Village Populated Place Profile / Hartford County, Connecticut Data". connecticut.hometownlocator.com.
- ↑ Congress, United States (March 27, 2012). "Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress". U.S. Government Printing Office – via Google Books.
- ↑ "St. Isaac Jogues Church". North American Martyrs Parish.
- ↑ Murray, Florence (March 27, 1947). "The Negro Handbook 1946-1947". Current Books, Incorporated – via Google Books.
Coordinates: 41°46′43″N 72°35′11″W / 41.7787°N 72.5865°W
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