Businesses survived

Despite the violence that resulted in the burning and looting of many businesses in the Hill, Columbus Auto Body stayed open for business, said Vincent DiLauro, now the third-generation owner. (His daughter plans to be the fourth.)

The auto body shop at 487 Columbus Ave., founded in 1928, is a block from where most of the rioting occurred.

“We opened and closed every day,” said DiLauro.

“My father was running the business at that time … and I had come back from serving in the Coast Guard. … I remember people shut all their lights off late at night … and no one would go outside.

“We were very concerned with our people coming in to work,” DiLauro said. “But we had very good neighbors. One of our guys slept here to make sure there weren’t any problems. I’m not sure what good it did.

“The police came right in and did their job … and the state police as well,” DiLauro said. “It was a little frightening at times.”

DiLauro said the repercussions lasted past August 1967. “It ends up getting a bad reputation for New Haven and the Hill section … because of those things going on at that time,” he said.

DiLauro said his business hasn’t suffered, but at the time “it probably hurt a little because people wouldn’t come to New Haven to have their cars fixed right after” the riots.

Bill Ianniello, who owns Orchard Painting and Decorating at 60 Orchard St., said, “I remember seeing the march at night coming right up Orchard Street … from Davenport through Congress Avenue, just a lot of people in the streets.”

He had bought a house in Hamden, but was still living on Orchard Street when the rioting started. He and his wife had a newborn and Ianniello said he “sat on the porch, protecting my family,” armed with a shotgun.

“We slept in the new house because we wanted to get out of there. It was just a tense, tense time.”

He said a family who lived across the street from his Orchard Street business — a man, woman and two young daughters — came and stayed with him at his house in Hamden for about a week to escape the riots.

Arthur Reid, 90 now, lived in the Dixwell area and remembers “the empty stores with the windows broken out because they pretty much emptied out the stores.” He could hear the glass breaking from his home on what was then Southwest Drive.

He does remember stores that returned: Capital Market at Dixwell Avenue and Foote Street, Shiffrin’s Market up Dixwell. “No package stores came back, I’ll tell you that,” Reid said. They were “the ones that were pretty much cleaned out.”