By Marilyn May
Milford History
Did you hear about the beautiful fountain with colored lights on the green, or the eight-story buildings along Broadway? Or the news that Milford actually became a city in 1931?
Probably not.
You would have heard about all that if you had read The Milford Citizen of July 1921, 100 years ago. At that time, the newspaper’s editor, Fred W. Lyon, got the idea to assign a reporter to write an article in the form of a letter as if it was 10 years in the future – 1931. The column’s double headline was “Milford of Ten Years Hence” and “Milford Writer Tells Citizen Readers How the Town Will Appear in 1931.”
The reporter decided to write to “My dear Bill,” a fictional person he supposedly grew up with in Milford and served with in France during World War I. The buddies, as the story goes, met again briefly years later when Bill was living in Indianapolis and mentioned that he wished he could see Milford again. This “letter” to Bill is signed by “Camille.”
“You know you wanted one good look at the old green and the Memorial Bridge and some of the old hills,” Camille wrote. “You always wanted to see the old town when we were in France, and now you haven’t stepped foot in it for 10 years. You wouldn’t know the old town and that’s a fact.”
The letter writer goes on to tell his friend that the town gave up the old town meeting form of government, because it became “a cumbersome thing way back in the days of the old wooden Town Hall.” Commenting on the new city form that was adopted with a mayor and aldermen, he states “Gosh – well the less said the better.” (Milford actually became a city in 1959.)
In telling Bill about the green, he writes “It’s all leveled up and beautified so as to make all the towns east of the Mississippi jealous. The great fountain on the green…has colored lights and all.”
There was no fountain on the green, but the bandstand was – and still is – a beautiful focal point.
About Broad Street: “Can you imagine it? One line of fine 8-story business blocks facing the green, and on the library side the niftiest Post Office building in New England.” He comments on a hotel on that side “with beauty and fashion to boot.”
Camille tells about walking down from Golden Hill on a sunny day and says the green “looks like enchantment to see the combination of the green park, sober (sic) colored pavements, bright buildings and life activity down on the green that used to be so quiet and where we used to play ball. (It’s) now as fine a scene as you can wish for.”
That’s one look into the future that has pretty much stayed true for 100 years.
Camille’s imagined future of the Memorial Bridge fortunately did not come to fruition.
“The old stone bridge (built in 1889) was taken down stone by stone and each stone replaced in a wider structure, and Simon Lake is happy at last, for he has that parkway of his from the green through to Wilcox Park, and no more salt meadows there either, just a fine bottom of grass, and Lake’s baseball grounds came true, and the Wepowaug is walled in past the park.”
Apparently submarine designer Simon Lake wanted a baseball park. Fowler Field today has several baseball fields.
“New Haven Avenue is a dignified business street, nice, wide, well-regulated and paved with a sort of clear atmosphere of its own”
Writing about transportation he informs Bill: “We have fine big omnibuses, clean, airy, speedy well handled by bright, uniformed, intelligent men.”
He tells his friend that as lower Gulf Street curves and brings you to the shore a “boulevard…runs from Laurel Beach to Oyster River. And opens up the whole expanse of Long Island Sound for miles and miles.” He describes it as a magnificent waterfront road 200 feet wide and adds, “You will have to search several planets besides this one for its equal, built with a stout sea wall, railed off, lighted, with…shelters…and bathing facilities. I don’t think New York has anything on us.”
He also imagined a rather genteel Bridgeport Avenue. “The old road to Bridgeport, yes…150 feet wide with greens in the middle of the roadway, trees and benches and the traffic well separated.”
Trees and benches never materialized, but it would have been good if the lanes had been well separated.
He points out changes in transportation: “The old N.H. & H.RR. woke up again and it’s a toss up now with some of our young bloods whether it’s to be trains or aeroplane(s) to the big cities. The world do(es) grow smaller and Milford larger, no getting away from that.”
He ends his letter with a promise to write more of “Milford’s great growth and beauty.”
One hundred years later we still have a beautiful green, the main post office on River Street has been put on the National Register of Historic Places, Silver Sands is a state park, and it seems that everyone from New York is coming here.
Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and is on the board of the Milford Historical Society.