Overlook

The Overlook neighborhood lies just above the Hillside neighborhood and was outside the village limits when developer Cornelius cables filed a plan in 1897 to develop the area as a garden suburb.  The plan included three sections: Highland Park and Columbia Park, both intended for single-family homes, and Cottage Park, intended for more modest homes.  The centerpiece of the project was Columbia Boulevard, an expansive landscaped street winding across the hilltop.

 

"You lived in Overlook and you went to Kingsbury School... it was a very cohesive neighborhood. The neighbors... were sort of middle [class], white-collar... there were doctors, there were executives of the brass industry, there were teachers.... It was a comfortable and stable neighborhood to grow up in [during] the '30s and '40s."
~ Frederick W. Chesson

 

Cables advertised the development’s virtues: its elevated position, its pure air, its spacious lots and broad avenues, its fine and abundant water supply, and its investment potential.  The success of the development, however, depended on its proximity to the trolley line, newly laid from the center of Waterbury to Waterville, running along the perimeter of Overlook up Willow Street and across Roseland Avenue.  An Overlook resident could ride the trolley downtown in only seven minutes.

 

"Upper Cooke Street was all farmland. When we lived on Cooke Street, that whole area was all woods."
~ Aaron Simon

 

"My father built a house just below Clowes Terrace [on Willow Street]. That was the end of the trolley line; the rest was woods from there on."
~ Stanley Levin

 

Although the neighborhood was strictly residential, several community institutions were permitted, including the Kingsbury School and McTernan School, a private boys school that merged with St. Margaret’s in 1972.  Other institutions in the neighborhood were the All Souls Episcopal Church, the Southmayd Home, and Beth El and B’Nai Shalom synagogues.  The former school on Columbia Boulevard has been converted to the Albanian Club.

 

"There were just so many things to do. There were always kids in the neighborhood. The doors were always open. You could go in and you were always welcome no matter who the neighbors were.... There were all kinds of people in the neighborhood, all kinds of nationalities. Everybody was so kind and warm, and it was really a nice place to be. "
~ Brenda Anderson-Killer

 

Fulton Park is a great neighborhood ornament.  The 70-acre park was established in 1919 by private gift of the Fulton family at site of the former Cooke Street reservoir.  It was planned by the Olmsted Brothers firm, the nation’s premier designer for urban parks, with areas of natural beauty and areas for organized athletics, including skiing. 


"We'd go ice skating in Fulton Park on the big pond. We used to play hockey on the little pond. I can remember going ice skating, and getting pretty cold, and going into a big house right in Fulton Park where we would gather around the fire and maybe buy some cocoa and get warmed up."
~ Donald Liebeskind