Whose House Is It Anyway?

When a city's quest for renewal means the death of an old neighborhood

By Barry Yeoman
AARP Magazine

Wilhelmina Dery has lived her entire 87 years in a blue sea captain's house near the banks of Connecticut's Thames River. From the ground floor, her family ran a grocery where the neighborhood's Italian women congregated Saturday mornings, buying freshly stuffed sausage and wedges of Parmesan cut from large wheels. Across the street, the river was thick with traffic: swordfish, tuna, and lobster fishing boats; Coast Guard ships; and, during Prohibition, the rum-running vessels that gave New London its reputation as a crossroads of the illegal liquor trade.

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