There’s the giant flashing phonograph sign that once lived atop Cutler’s Records. The iconic red door that beckoned hamburger aficionados to Louis’ Lunch. World War One military recruitment posters. Sally’s pizza boxes. A row of seats from the floor of the New Haven arena. The armature of t he anatomically incorrect stegosaurus that once made its home at Yale’s Peabody Museum. The Christopher Columbus statue removed from Wooster Square in June 2020. On Friday night, the doors opened to the “cabinet of Elm City curiosities,” as Lost in New Haven founder Robert Greenberg has referred to it, with its tens of thousands of items and artifacts, stretching back to the indigenous tribes like the Quinnipiacs and to the town’s founding in 1638, and forward across the centuries of streets and businesses and inhabitants. The occasion, billed “Hearts and History: a Lost in New Haven After Hours Event,” featured a scavenger hunt, access to the original Anchor bar, and music by the Chill Project. It marked the first time Lost in New Haven, which in 2020 moved from Grand Avenue to its “forever home” in a 25,000 square-foot former painting company warehouse on Hamilton Street, has invited the general public inside. (Click here to read about a school tour, here to read about a ticketed concert event, and here to read about a retirement party hosted at the museum.) Greenberg said the plan is for a gradual increase in days and hours with the completion of the current construction projects. A series of after-hour events, school group visits, and access to the museum for use as an event space are in the offing. “It’s rare to have Friday the 13th in front of Valentine’s Day, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for people to celebrate their love of New Haven and its history,” said Greenberg, standing against a backdrop of New Haven Nighthawks championship banners, as a crush of museum-goers pored over exhibits and enjoyed appetizers and drinks in the mellow-lit space. “It’s their history and story, too.” There was Stan Bujalski, a retired postal worker, who was marveling at a campaign poster showing former Mayor Ben DeLieto. “He was my neighbor on Townsend Avenue, we lived in 172, he was 150,” he said. His friend Alfred Robyn gestured at a green neon sign that read JACK’S, referring to the now-shuttered Jack’s Bar and Grill. “East Street,” he said. “Good times. Tell you the truth, every sign that’s in here, we hit every one of them.” The Chill Project, with Dudley Flake on keyboard, Cedric Herbert on lead guitar, with Doron Monk Flake and Chavon Hampton doing the vocals. Clifton McClean is on saxophone. Photo courtesy of Robert Greenberg. There was also Carolyn Mullen taking a snapshot of a black-and-white panoramic of the Yale Bowl from the first game played there on Nov. 22, 1914. (The frame comes from wood Greenberg salvaged from the seatbacks at Yale Bowl.) Mullen’s father, James DeLucia Jr., has been to every Yale home football game since he was four, she said. He’s now 84.   Marcella Monk Flake. Then there was Marcella Monk Flake, founder of the Monk Youth Jazz STEAM Collective and cousin of jazz icon Thelonious Monk. “When I walked in and saw the sign for Seamless Rubber Company, the nostalgia was overwhelming,” she said. “I said, ‘My father worked there.’” Said Flake, a Lost in New Haven board member whose husband Dudley and son Doron were performing as part of The Chill Project, “I love this place, especially for our kids, because now they can look at something, and it’s not in a textbook, it’s alive.” Fred Hurley was pointing out a photo in a collection of New Haven Police Department artifacts. “That’s me with George Bush,” said Hurley, who served on the force from 1974 to 2003 as a detective, a sniper on the SWAT team, and a member of the underwater search and recovery team. Hurley brought along his buddy, Jimmy Kelly, a retired firefighter; he donated a bronze fire nozzle to the NHFD exhibit from his collection. Then there was young Grace Vitale, daughter of Joe Vitale, director of the city’s 911 system, who contributed a beat-up steamer trunk from the late 1800s. J. Day Steamer trunk (above) found by Grace Vitale. Photo courtesy of Robert Greenberg. “This was during Covid when everyone was cleaning out their houses, and look what she found,” said Vitale, who himself donated the original sign for Dupee’s Coin and Stamp Shop on George Street next to the earlier location of Louis’ Lunch (now Temple Medical Center). Paula Daddio, native New Havener and retired Wilbur Cross science teacher, reminiscing about Cutlers Records. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo “It’s the stories that give life to these objects,” said Greenberg, as he took in Vitale’s account of the rescue of a plaque once installed at the original NHPD building. Which explains the museum’s ‘open-door’ policy for contributions: anyone can donate their objects. “I want everyone to be able to tell their own story,” he said. “New Haven is the ultimate American story, the ultimate American city,” he went on. “It’s a city of inventions, of firsts, the first planned city, the first planned cemetery. We have iconic music coming out of here, iconic food. We have the steam boiler, the rock crusher.” That’s not counting silly putty, corsets, lollipops, the first commercial telephone exchange, and the hamburger. “So what’s happening is New Haven is starting to really understand how it has affected America,” he said. “And part of why I’m building this is to prove the point that we possess something magnificent here.” Corsets on display at Lost in New Haven. The post Former Cop Finds Himself; Former Postman Finds His Neighbor-Mayor appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less