Back in my student days at Yale University, this was just about the time I'd start anticipating those few weeks of relative leisure before diving into my final papers. Sometime during those middle weeks of April, I always planned a little excursion away from the campus's gothic architecture and the cute Chapel Street restaurants with their bouquet of exotic international tastes. A leisurely half-hour stroll and I was in a place entirely unlike the campus scene: New Haven's traditional Italian neighborhood of Wooster Square.
In the spring, you can count on a beautiful walk. Cherry trees line the street and the park, and the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates the glorious blooms each year. The 2008 festival is on April 20, with a rain date of April 27.
For North Jersey residents, the equivalent would be a town's summer street fair — but probably with a lot more Italian food, and with drifting pink-white petals.
Perched on Wooster Street and stretching into the residential area around the green of Wooster Square, the neighborhood is also a culinary goldmine in a town of good eats. The food, after all, is the reason I go back again and again.
First, there is the pizza. Pepe's Pizzeria, founded in 1925, claims to have served the first pizza in America. The light, thin crust plays the perfect partner to toppings so fresh you can almost taste the greenness of the vine in the tomato sauce. Pepe's one-of-a-kind clam pizza goes back to the restaurant's inception.
Today, Pepe's grandson, Gary Bimonte, is in charge of the place, and the smell of pizza may be forever baked into the walls. Photos decorating those walls provide evidence of celebrity visits, including one by President Ronald Reagan in the '80s.
While the late president may not have had to wait in line to get in, you can count on it. Down the street at the competition, Sally's Apizza, (founded in 1938), you'll also notice a line down the block — especially on sunny days. Neither establishment takes reservations — they've never needed to. Anyone in line will tell you it's worth the wait. Get there early, and always budget time for the line.
In the area, too, are Consiglio's, an Italian-American restaurant with hefty pasta portions; Abate, rumored to be a favorite of Hillary and Bill Clinton; and Tony and Lucille's, which lays claim to discovering the calzone.
If you have room afterwards, Libby's Italian Pastry Shop (circa 1922) is the logical — and delicious — next stop. Libby's sells cookies online (libbyscookies.com), but get those to go and head straight for the good stuff: the cannolis, the Italian ice and the gelato.
Walking off dessert, you might wander into Wooster Square, where a statue of Christopher Columbus stands watch over a carefully planned park. The green was named after Revolutionary War hero David Wooster, who maintained a warehouse on Wooster Street before dying in a battle against the redcoats in 1777.
The area was not settled by Italians. It was, by the late 18th century, the center of the seaport activity and home to prosperous ship captains and traders. The area became a fashionable summer resort. But with the Industrial Revolution, many of the elegant homes were destroyed to make way for factories, and Italian immigrants began arriving in the 1870s for the jobs those factories provided.
The neighborhood had its ups, and then more prolonged downs. But in the late 1950s, Wooster Square became the first urban renewal project in the country. Homes and stores were renovated and returned to their former charm, and today the Wooster Square area is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Many of the buildings in the historic district were built between 1830 and 1870. Their setting is even prettier with the added attraction of cherry blossoms pleasantly littering the whole neighborhood.
The square functions as the gathering place it was meant to be: All paths lead to the center of the park, where David Wooster's name is engraved in a round black floor stone.
You may go to New Haven to visit Yale University's art museums, or to go back 300 years down at the New Haven Crypt. But for a mix of history, great food and a big dollop of heart, the Little Italy of Wooster Square can't be beat.
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
1 comment:
Great post! Downtown New Haven is incredibly vibrant and a great place to live, although it is becoming expensive. Hopefully Wooster Street's restaurants won't be priced out in the near future!
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