You don’t have to wait for nightfall to go stargazing in New Haven, Connecticut. If you’re near the corner of Orange and Crown Streets, you don’t even have to look up at the sky. In fact, it’s best to go in daylight and turn your eyes downward to see the “Path of Stars.” On either side of Orange at it’s 
crossing with Crown, and on Crown approaching the intersection of State Street on the east and Church Street on the west observant pedestrians will find twenty-one gray granite stars within white concrete circles that are themselves set within pink concrete squares and embedded in the sidewalk. Each star bears the name and a bit of story about a person who lived or worked in the area from the late seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth. They are not the famous people whose names were frequently in the newspapers of their day and who are now found in history books. They are people you’ve probably never heard of whose lives nevertheless made a difference.
Among those commemorated is John Brocket, a surveyor who in the mid 1600s staked out the city in a regular grid and lived in this neighborhood now called Ninth Square. Lee Chong opened the first Chinese
restaurant in New Haven in 1920 where he provided economical midday meals and evening dancing. When Helen Perez Hallock’s husband died during the depression leaving her with three children under twelve, she rescued his family appliance business from foreclosure and ran it herself for over a decade. There are also stars for Titus Street who in the eighteenth century opened what is believed to be Connecticut’s first hardware store, and Joseph McAlpine, a twentieth century janitor and later community representative for the New Haven Gas Company, the first person of African descent to work there. The range of people in time, background, occupation, and personal triumphs is remarkable. It is not only a quick lesson in history, but in everyday courage. These are ordinary people who built the world we inhabit today through their personal ethic, energy and hard work.
The “Path of Stars,” competed in 1994, is the brainchild of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, a graphic designer and public artist teaching at Yale since 1990, where she became the first tenured woman professor in the art school. She won a $25,000 competition with the intention of memorializing the “residents and landlords, merchants and laborers, managers and employees” who have made a vibrant neighborhood for centuries. Since she lived in Los Angeles before coming east, it’s not surprising de Bretteville’s work echoes the “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” which includes more than 2,500 terrazzo and brass stars celebrating people in the entertainment industry. A big difference is that many of the names embedded along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street have no need of sidewalk emblems to preserve the memory of their presence.
Just southeast of the New Haven Green, Ninth Square is one of the oldest parts of the city and had great success as a manufacturing center from the mid 1800s until well into the 1900s. By the end of twentieth
century, it was a rundown district with an abundance of vacant former factories and warehouses. Comprised primarily of brick and other masonry buildings of three to five stories that include decorative windows, bracketed cornices and terra cotta ornamentation, the area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With visionary public and private efforts, today it’s a happening arts district busy with upscale shops, housing and restaurants.
Sometimes the sidewalk stars and the buildings echo one another. A member of a multi generational furniture making clan, Abel C. Chamberlain merits a star commemorating the 1832 opening of his furniture store which was run for
many years by his descendants and “is known as the first retail furniture family business in the United States.” The family name is still emblazoned on the five story white-painted brick building with its columned entry and a band of leaded glass above the plate storefront display windows. Today it’s the home of Artspace, and has an over 5,000 square foot area for exhibitions and performances.
There’s a less obvious relationship between the star for twentieth century firefighter Ed Lawlor and the Firehouse 12 building where he was stationed. For fourteen years he drove the only city “fire engine that combined firefighting and emergency rescue apparatus.” Firehouse 12 is now a bar, recording studio and performance space.
Even today, the individuals recognized by these stars can resonate in our lives, however tangentially. I
was stopped short by the name of Frederick D. Grave, who founded a cigar manufacturing company here in 1884 that is still in business today. I recalled many a summer afternoon working in my garden while I smoked one of their Bouquet Specials, made with Connecticut tobacco and distinctively packed upright in a wooden box with each cigar in a glass tube. I find them a flavorful and relaxing smoke while I pull weeds or deadhead flowers. The next time I light one, I’ll be treading the “Path of Stars” in my mind.
Walking through this tiny galaxy of stars, I feel the energy of time’s continuum and a sense that the ordinary people I see on the street today may be making similar significant, but unknown contributions to the area and maybe even the world. Here the past is concretely and literally embedded in the present. It’s right beneath our feet, inviting us to walk and explore further.
