1 Broadway has been a retail hub in New Haven for over one hundred years, although the building has seen a large variety of owners and uses. As of 2015, the building is occupied by Kiko Milano, a cosmetic brand from Italy, and Emporium DNA 2050, a high end retailer.



The site can be earliest traced to 1913, when Broadway was a bustling commercial strip, and the corner of Broadway and York was home to a collection of commercial buildings (Mills Brown 1976).  At the turn of the century, Simon Persky, a local real estate developer, owned Numbers 1-13 Broadway and leased out the spaces to various shopkeepers.  Ralph Pagter leased Number 1 Broadway, the storefront on the corner, for twenty years, from 1904 through 1924, and operated a clothing store there.  Even when Persky leased the entire collection of buildings to the Charles S. Longley Company in 1924, Pagter continued to rent the second and third floors and cellar of the building from Longley until at least 1931 (Historic Resources Inventory 1981; White Brothers & Clark, Hall & Peck 1931).  Pagter’s clothing shop was a mainstay on the corner, a longstanding retail anchor with sandwiched among other shops.



Persky retained his properties through the Depression, but by 1939, 1 Broadway was no longer a retail hub.  Instead, the corner now hosted the College Toasty Restaurant, operated directly by Charles S. Longley himself, with a clothing shop now located next door (the Yale Clothing Center & Rental Parlor at Number 3).  But the Depression had taken its toll, and many of the other storefronts on the block were vacant.  In 1943, a fire destroyed all of Persky’s buildings at 1-13 Broadway. Rather than rebuild three-story small-lot buildings, he decided to take the block in a modernist direction.  In 1944, Persky secured a permit to build a one-story building that would encompass the entire collection of properties: 1-13 Broadway would now simply be 1 Broadway.  The V-shaped brick building, wrapping around the corner of Broadway and York and extending down the street, was unlike anything else the area had to offer.  When historic preservationists surveyed the building in 1981, they explained, “While not particularly well-integrated with the scale, cornice line and style of surrounding Broadway and York Street, this building exemplifies in New Haven an economically-designed small commercial structure of the 1940s which combines aspects of Art Deco… and Art Moderne… Its style is unique in the sector” (Historic Resources Inventory 1981; New Haven City Directory 1939).



The Liggett Drug Company became the block’s next mainstay, remaining on the site for at least twenty years.  Another pharmacy, Morton’s, succeeded Liggett’s in the 1970s, making the corner of Broadway and York the site of a locally owned neighborhood pharmacy for over thirty years (New Haven City Directory 1947, 1967, 1974).  By 1980, the building was vacant, and in 1981 Stan Lessler, a local attorney, rented the large space from Gertrude Levin and Martin H. Mult to revive the spirit of the old College Toasty and give the building a try as an eatery once more.  The café would seat 140, and although no cooking would be permitted on site, sandwiches, newspapers, and cookies would be available for purchase.  In 1983, the operators added an ice cream parlor (Building Permit Application 1981a,b; Building Permit 1983).  Called Crumbs, by the 1990s the establishment had been renamed Demery’s (New Haven City Directory 1994).



In 1995, Yale University took control of the building and transformed it into Au Bon Pain, a café that became one of the harbingers of the university’s transformation of Broadway into a high-end shopping district dominated by university-sponsored national chains.  With only a 50-seat capacity, the space transitioned quickly from a large eatery with room for many diners to a quick in-and-out establishment.  Au Bon Pain left the space in 2013, and Yale University Properties spent one year looking for new tenants "to add it its list of retail and restaurant properties" (New Haven Register.)



Tracing the changing use of 1 Broadway indicates the somewhat surprising repetition of uses over time.  Beginning as a clothing store, the original building was owned and operated by the same people for dozens of years until fire prompted radical changes.  The new building enjoyed a long second life as a drug store before being transformed once again into a café, a use that has survived for thirty years. Today, the building is once again a clothing store, bringing it back to its original program.



Despite these few sustained uses, however, the building’s role in the community has changed drastically over time.  As a centrally located drug store, for instance, 1 Broadway was able to serve a broad swath of the community, and the 140-seat café (which was not owned by the university) could provide a setting in which city residents could sit, linger, and meet others.  The current 50-seat Au Bon Pain, by contrast, provides a quick in-and-out environment; its prices are too high for a large number of New Haven residents; and the university’s ownership of the space and of the rest of Broadway has converted the area into an extension of the campus.  Au Bon Pain is a university-controlled space, and it feels like one; subjectively, it does not feel open to non-Yale affiliated residents.



Sources



Elizabeth Mills Brown. New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design.  New



Haven: Yale University, 1976.



Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University. White Brothers & Clark, Hall & Peck Records. Group 1820, Series 1, Box 41.



New Haven Building Department. Building Permit Application, March 5, 1981.



------. Building Permit Application, March 24, 1981.



------. Building Permit, April 6, 1983.



------. Building Permit, August 6, 1996.



------. Building Permit Application, 2004.



Haven Museum. New Haven Historical Society. Historic Resources Inventory. February 1981.



------. New Haven City Directories.