A few years ago (maybe in 2001) I went to New Haven, Connecticut for barbecue. There's a guy on Dixwell Avenue, which runs from downtown New Haven north through Hamden and beyond, who cooks and sells chicken and pork out of his driveway. Not knowing where to go I got a chicken dinner I drove down to Yale and ate an enormous and delicious meal on a campus lawn.
As far as I can tell the neighborhood where the barbecue guy lives is known as Dixwell. It is on the northern edge of New Haven. While I was trying to find the barbecue guy I saw lots of window signs all painted in the same style and with a similar color scheme. I didn't have a camera with me on that day so I vowed to come back and photograph the signs.
I finally made it back to New Haven last Saturday. Sadly, many of the signs I saw a few years ago have disappeared. Dixwell was a poor, African-American community when i visited the first time, and only seemed to be poorer now. I photographed nearly all the signs that I saw on this visit. The window paintings are on the exterior and are bound to disappear sooner or later just from exposure to the elements.
The top two photos were the first two photos I took. The owner of Fly's Unisex House of Styles rushed outside to see what I was doing. She didn't seem too happy at first but I think she appreciated that I was capturing the signage to put on the web. She also happened to have grown up about three blocks from where I now live. The name of the artist who did the signs is Leroy Parks. He lives in Dixwell.
Parts of the neighborhood are also known as "Newhallville"
Posted by: Anna | 09 September 2004 at 03:11 PM
I was wondering about that because I saw the Newhallville Community Center. Are the names used interchangeably?
Posted by: joe | 09 September 2004 at 04:10 PM