Bank Street, Waterbury
Near New Haven, Connecticut
Waterbury's Bank Street Historic District preserves four attached commercial buildings that brass money built between eighteen eighty-three and nineteen oh four. The street's name tells the story: as Waterbury became the brass capital of the world, banks, insurance companies, and law firms clustered here to serve the industry. The architecture ranges from Richardsonian Romanesque to Queen Anne to Georgian Revival.
Waterbury's brass mills supplied cartridge casings for both World Wars, door hardware for American homes, and plumbing fittings for a continent's worth of cities. When the industry declined after World War Two, Bank Street declined with it. The historic district designation, added to the National Register of Historic Places, helped stabilize what remained and anchors ongoing downtown revival efforts.
Walking it now is a compressed lesson in what American industrial capitalism looked like at full force.
