COS COB IN THE 20s AND 30s
Cos
Cob is a close-knit, self-sufficient community within Greenwich with its own
identity. With Long Island Sound to its south and the Mianus River to its east,
it resonates with water views and a rich, nautical history that dates to the
eighteenth century. It was also home to the Cos Cob Art Colony, the first
impressionist art colony in Connecticut, which flourished in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This hamlet includes the sixty-one-acre
Montgomery Pinetum, its own neighborhood library, restaurants, and shops. Many
of these enterprises are located in “the Hub,” the commercial area at the
intersection of Strickland Road and East Putnam Avenue.
Gertrude Riska
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
Gertrude
O’Donnell Riska, born in 1920, has vivid memories of growing up in Cos Cob in
the 20s and 30s. She shared her reminiscences with Marcella Raphael of the Oral
History Project in 1993. In her interview, she chose to take the reader on a
walk describing the sights and sounds that she experienced approximately one
hundred years ago.
The
Cos Cob neighborhood she described had no traffic lights on Post Road with “few
cars. . . I would say if there were twenty cars in an hour on the Post Road,
that would be a good amount.” Policemen stood in two sentry boxes to help
residents cross the street and walked the street each evening “to make sure
that the business people had secured their door for the night.” She observed, “There
weren’t too many wealthy people in Cos Cob. It was more a working-class town.”
As
a child, Gertrude remembered shopping for food “just about every day because
you didn’t have freezers or refrigerators. You had the old-fashioned ice box where
the ice man brought your block of ice if you put a sign in the window and told
him to stop with it.” McKinley’s Meat Market was a frequent destination. “He
had a huge, giant icebox and every time you wanted a pork chop or something. .
. he’d disappear, and the door would slam shut, and then in a minute he would
come out with a whole big piece of meat and cut the pork chops or whatever. . .
He’d have to return it right away back to this refrigerator. . . they had huge
hooks that they hung (meat) on.”
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| Looking from Strickland Road to the Post Road Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project |
Down
the adjacent driveway, was a “tiny-weeny store” operated by Gussie Feldman.
Gussie had a large number of children and no employees. “When you entered the
store, you’d hear a little bell go ding-ding. . . Pretty soon she’d look
through the upstairs window and say, ‘All right, I’ll be right down’. . . Today
we’d leave someone in the store with the cash register. But, those days, you
didn’t.” Gussie “sold everything from thread to sneakers to odds and ends. . . She
did a good business on the Fourth of July. We all went over there and got
rockets.”
Gertrude
remembered the first A&P housed near the old Cos Cob School in a block of
stores built by “a very well-known builder, Mr. Schubert.” Unlike today’s
supermarkets, it was a very small store with a counter on one side and, on the
far side, canned goods on shelves. “You dared not take anything off the
shelves.” Instead, you would wait your turn and ask for each item. “The
salesman would walk around the counter, go to the far side and get the can of
what you wanted, go back. . . He would write the price of each on a brown paper
bag. It was very time consuming.”
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| The Clam Box Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project |
A
favorite spot, Gertrude stated, was The Clam Box. “Everybody knows The Clam Box.
. . It was almost across from about where the car wash is” on Post Road. “It
was really a little square kind of a shack” run by the Gross family in the 30s.
“Even people from New York would come up to the Clam Box. . . the food was
really good, and the price was good.” Originally, they “had maybe two stools. .
. but later they added on. They made it much, much bigger.” Eventually, it
closed and was torn down.
Where
the Mill Pond Shopping Center exists now, Gertrude states, “That was just all
wetlands. It was just an empty swampland with the tide coming in and out almost
up to the Post Road.” At the end of Mead Avenue, there was one roadway “that had
been filled in with rocks and extended out into the channel.” Gertrude and her
friends would walk out there to an area known as Lockwood’s Dock and swim. “Then
you came out in your wet bathing suit and back down across Post Road. . . It
was just a normal thing to do, and that was the only place that you could
swim.” Between Mead Avenue and Relay Place was a little white building called
White Castle Hamburgers. “They were five cents each. . . For a quarter you got
five, and they were delicious.”
Cos Cob School
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
Of
course, school was the center of activity in Gertrude Riska’s life. “. . . the
Cos Cob Library (was) contained in it, to the left of the front door.” The
school was also the setting for country fairs and annual Halloween parties. The
fireman’s carnival was held in the school to make money to maintain the
firehouse. “It was one of the two events that the whole town waited for. They
had the usual booths with spinning wheels and prizes. But the real exciting
thing was the dance floor and the Fireman’s Ball.” Gertrude’s father was chief
of the Cos Cob Fire Department. “We waited practically breathless all year for
that Fireman’s Ball. . . The jitterbugging hadn’t come in, but they were doing
the waltzes. It was just nice.”
An Early Cos Cob Fire Engine
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project
Gertrude
was particularly proud of her father, Lewis O’Donnell, and his involvement with
the nascent Cos Cob Fire Department, founded in 1922, in addition to his work
as chief electrical engineer at the Cos Cob Power Plant. Gertrude’s dad and some of his friends worked tirelessly
to convert a donated touring car into a pumper for the fire department as “they
didn’t have the funds to go out and buy the proper engines.” When their task
was accomplished, “it was a great, wonderful thing for the fire department to
have this unique automobile or pumper.” Meetings were originally held in the
second floor of the Taylor barn. However, soon after, letters were written to
potentially wealthy donors to help construct a proper firehouse. Eventually, a
temporary firehouse was built in 1924 [next to where the present firehouse is
now].
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| Cos Cob Firehouse Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project |
Gertrude
Riska continued to live in Cos Cob until her death, at the age of 96, in 2016.
She taught piano to hundreds of students in her home on Orchard Street and
played the organ in churches until the age of 92. She and her family’s legacy
contributed much to her community in Cos Cob as well as to the town of
Greenwich.
The interview entitled “A Walk Through Cos Cob in the 1920s and 30s” may be read in its entirety at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the Oral History Project office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subject to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.
