People of many backgrounds feel Norwalk’s their back yard
By SUSAN SILVERS
ssilvers@ctpost.com
Incorporated: 1651
36.3 square miles
City Hall, 125 East Ave. Telephone: 854-7705.
NORWALK — When he got fed up with life on Long Island 18 years ago, Bob Gilfillan, then a New York City transit worker, looked to Connecticut.
"Long Island was getting too crowded," said Gilfillan, now 52, the father of two. Still, he didn’t want to isolate his children, whom he wanted "to grow up experiencing the broad spectrum of humanity."
Gilfillan ended up moving to Norwalk. And despite the problems here — like other cities, Norwalk has its share of social ills such as crime and poverty — he said he’d do it again.
Distinct from neighboring white-bread communities, Norwalk has carved out — and even capitalized on — its identity as a diverse community noted for its stability, as documented by the 2000 U.S. Census.
Among the signs of this stability, Norwalk can point to demographics that, in many categories, changed little from the 1990 figures.
The city’s white residents now comprise about 74 percent of the overall population, instead of 76 percent a decade ago. Blacks remain at 15 percent, and Asians have almost doubled to 3 percent. The Hispanic population increased to nearly 15 percent, but Hispanics are classified by the census as an ethnicity not a race, since their heritage is both black and white.
The city has a median age that edged upward just two years to 36, and a continuing average of 2.5 people per household.
There are, however, a few areas of significant change in the latest census data:
l Like other Fairfield County communities, the city showed overall population growth, from 78,331 in 1990 to 82,951, a jump of 5.9 percent.
l With their growth, Hispanics edged out blacks as the most identifiable minority group in the city. But there is diversity among their ranks as well, with the once-dominant Puerto Ricans numbering 2,978, or 23 percent of the total, and Mexicans accounting for 1,897, or nearly 15 percent, and a sprinkling of Cubans. Fully 60 percent of Norwalk’s Hispanics trace their heritage elsewhere.
The Hispanic segment is up from about 9 percent in 1990 to 12,966, or about 15 percent in 2000, and now exceeds the 12,663 city residents identified as blacks.
l Nearly 2,500 more youngsters, for a total of 15,786 children under the age of 14, marked growth in that segment to 19 percent of the overall population, from 17 percent a decade ago.
But Norwalk didn’t experience the kinds of dramatic shifts apparent in places like Westport and Fairfield, where an influx of young families reversed trends that had been most notable for swelling numbers of senior citizens.
In fact, Mayor Frank J. Esposito suggests the city has actually changed less than the numbers show. "I think they did a better job," said Esposito, suggesting census-takers missed some of the population in 1990, when Norwalk’s population rose only slightly to 78,331 from the 1980 count of 77,767. "I think this was a truer and more efficient census," he said of the recent figures.
The better count, he indicated, came about because city planners worked for months to reach out to areas known for higher density of non-English speaking immigrants and where education levels are lower, in hopes of encouraging everyone to make sure they were counted.
Because the city isn’t as wealthy as neighboring communities, census numbers really matter here. City officials depend on the data to justify grant applications for assistance in areas such as housing, education and health, and to add clout to its standing in the suburban-dominated General Assembly.
Although the city is currently celebrating the 350th anniversary of its colonial recognition as a town, it split into distinct sectors that were more recently consolidated in 1913.
Unlike other cities, with economies built on a dominant industry, Norwalk emerged from those differing segments, which are still apparent today.
For example, there is South Norwalk, once known for its gritty factories, long home to the immigrant and poorer populations that have found work there.
But South Norwalk is also known as the restored and rebuilt neighborhood known as "SoNo" centered on turn-of the-century Washington Street.
The bustling area features a cluster of museums and the Maritime Aquarium, a wide variety of restaurants, eclectic shopping and a collection of bars and nightclubs that attract a younger and carefree clientele.
There also are the northern, eastern and western fringes of the city where farms and woods once stood and now are affluent suburban neighborhoods.
There are the commercial thoroughfares, such as Main Avenue and Route 1, with traces of single-family homes and some condominiums but better known for shopping and office parks such as Merritt 7 and Riverview.
And there is Rowayton, an exclusive waterfront community, where residents have restored and enlarged Colonial and Victorian homes on small lots.
Norwalk has both multimillion-dollar shorefront homes in Rowayton and dilapidated public housing less than a mile away. It also has condominiums and assorted forms of subsidized housing.
In short, the city’s attributes combine to make people with many kinds of backgrounds feel at home.
"I like the diversity of people," said Anita Weiser, 31, a native of Norway who adopted her husband’s hometown. "Everybody’s friendly," she said, adding that she believes Norwalk is less pretentious than its richer neighbors.
But that’s not all she appreciates. "This beach is great," she said at Calf Pasture Beach one brilliant September day as she watched her two young children. She also applauded the variety of other attractions, ranging from the Stepping Stones Museum for Children to the annual Oyster Festival in Veterans Park.
It was the proximity to beaches — and the availability of housing — that attracted Neil Dworkin, a 54-year-old university professor who moved here from Westchester County, N.Y.
"Norwalk is more spaced out," he said, explaining the city has an unhurried feel. He said he also feels the city offers a lot of stability in its economic base and management.
But in terms of adapting to change, Esposito said it is not surprising that Norwalk would be home to a growing population of Hispanics, as the city has a long history of being hospitable to newcomers from other places.
"The job opportunities were here for years," the 73-year-old Esposito said, recalling the immigrants — then Greek and Italian — in his youth. "There’s still employment for them here."
The mother of six children now 33 to 47 years old, Gloria Seymour remembers moving here from Derby during the Depression so her father could find work. As she raised her own family, Seymour said she grew to appreciate the mixed population of Norwalk, and especially the one her children encountered at Tracey School.
"It was a wonderfully, naturally integrated school," she said, explaining some issues that sparked controversy elsewhere didn’t have to be dealt with in her neighborhood. "We never had busing."
Norwalk’s neighboring communities have a "sterile environment" that doesn’t appeal to her. "It’s not the way the world is."
And the mixed population makes Norwalkers with all kinds of backgrounds feel at home.
Eager to escape the noise of New York, Louis Schulman and his wife, Sylvia, chose not to settle in one of the region’s more affluent towns. "We wanted our kids to grow up in a diverse community," he said.
Schulman, executive director of the Norwalk Transit District, hasn’t exactly distanced himself from the city’s more homogenous neighbors, as his agency oversees public transportation services for area communities including Wilton and Westport.
In Norwalk, Schulman found a community he could throw himself into.
Schulman’s volunteer activities include serving on the boards of the United Way, Human Services Council, Regional Mental Health Board and Senior Service Coordinating Council. "I think we have a responsibility to improve our communities," he said.
But he outdid routine civic activities when he managed to link the transit district with Norwalk’s well-known collection of Works Progress Administration art. The art was produced under the auspices of a federal program created during the Great Depression aimed at putting 3.5 million people to work.
With the transit district arranging for a new office and maintenance complex — scheduled to open this week —Schulman tapped grant money to restore four art works. The pieces were stored for 12 years, since the former Norwalk High School, for which they were painted, was transformed into City Hall. Now the paintings will be showcased at the new transit building, where they will be accessible to the public.
Meanwhile, he arranged for all the works to be photographed in a book that he hopes will raise funds for a permanent restoration fund.
A product of the segregated south, Douglas Sutton, the local NAACP branch president, originally settled in New Canaan about 30 years ago after he was recruited to teach there.
But with his young daughter in mind, he said he soon left for Norwalk. "I didn’t want her to feel so isolated," he said. "We moved into a very integrated section."
And very integrated into the community. Over the years, he became a Boy Scout leader, president of the Cranbury PTA, and joined the board of directors at the YMCA. "You basically follow your kids around," he laughed.
In some ways, Sutton said his Virginia upbringing minimized whatever racial affronts he suffered here — he’s not even sure the slights his children suffered, such as not being invited to parties, were racially based. But he’s mindful that not all Norwalk’s black residents have had so smooth a path.
The NAACP is continuing to press for enforcement of a consent decree aimed at providing more access to housing stock. There is a shortage of low- and moderate-income housing, Sutton observed.
And though the city’s plans to transform the so-called Reed-Putnam area south of Interstate 95 into a neighborhood of gleaming office towers and upscale apartments, "people are displaced in the process," he observed.
When he came to Norwalk a quarter-century ago, Jose Bermudez said the Hispanic community was smaller, and predominantly Puerto Rican. As recently as 1990, Puerto Ricans comprised 40 percent of the city’s 7,339 Hispanics.
A native of San Juan who had relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y., after his Army service, Bermudez, liked the Connecticut he saw — and heard — after his sister moved to Stamford. "No sirens, no subways," explained the 56-year-old resident, who lives near his employment in the Belden Avenue post office, where he is a clerk.
It wasn’t always easy. One bar told him they didn’t serve Puerto Ricans. He walked out.
Bermudez has worked to make Hispanics’ assimilation into mainstream American society a bit easier than his was. He helped establish the organization, United Hispanic Action Norwalk, which advocates for their interests and is a proving ground for those seeking public office. Now, he sees Hispanics active in both major political parties here and running for offices in the November election.
But he also works to get parents involved in their youngsters’ education.
"We have to be concerned," said Bermudez, who explained many parents can’t read notices or homework their children bring home from school. The children, he said, need their parents to get involved so that they don’t fall behind.
Bermudez said he isn’t surprised that, over the last decade, more Hispanics have come to Norwalk from throughout Latin America. "Everybody’s looking for better opportunities," he said.
Bermudez said he hopes the Hispanics will preserve their special cultural characteristics as they become assimilated, but added it’s tough even with his own grandchildren.
Bermudez said he is more comfortable talking to them in Spanish. And how to do they answer? "In English," he said.
+ Census 2000 Website
+ Census
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