At 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 4, the manager of the Anchor Bar Restaurant screamed that she was shutting it down—for good. A hurried last call ensued. Angry employees snatched up half-empty glasses and rushed patrons out the door and onto the sidewalk.
Two and a half hours earlier, Jesse Richards, a photographer, filmmaker, and New Haven native, found out that his favorite spot would be closing down that night. Word spread quickly on Facebook as employees, who had been given only a few hours’ notice, posted the news. But Richards arrived at the scene minutes too late.
“Absolutely not, guys. We’re closed. Nobody’s coming in,” an employee told him at the door. A few people—likely employees—brushed past Richards and his friend.
“Except for those guys, huh?” Richard’s friend said, explaining that they just wanted a few pictures.
After a few moments of negotiating, the employee slammed the door shut.
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The Anchor’s closure came after a period of inconsistent rent payments beginning in 2013. Karen Peart, a Yale University press secretary, said in a statement to CTNOW that Yale University Properties made efforts to keep the bar open. They made a court agreement in mid-2014 with DWN Enterprises, the agency that has managed the Anchor’s rental payments since 2012. After DWN continuously failed to make payments, University Properties notified DWN of a January 2015 closure.
Richards started an online petition on change.org in the wake of Anchor’s closure condemning what he calls a “slow homogenization/ gentrification that Yale University has been imposing on our hometown.” But he admitted that he can’t place the blame fully on the University. The restaurant wasn’t abiding by an agreed-upon contract.
“Maybe restaurants that can pay their rents aren’t necessarily the ones we always want around,” said Will Hall, MC ’15, an undergrad who was somewhat of a regular at the Anchor. After its closing, he even wrote a personal essay (published on Yale Herald Online) eulogizing the bar and its unique environment.
The Anchor was different from most New Haven bars. It was 75 years old and “the kind of place you always assumed would be there,” Richards said. Maps, newspaper clippings, and old photographs of New Haven lined its wood-paneled walls. Crescent-shaped booths with cracking teal vinyl could fit three comfortably—or squeeze in four or five. “Divey” and “weird” are among the words Hall used to describe the Anchor. “To be honest, it looked kind of shitty,” Hall says, “But I think that was the draw for me—the fact that it was so clearly not trying to appeal to me.” The tables wobbled. Two bathrooms occupied the basement, one for men, one for women, though Hall said Anchor was the kind of place where those signs were treated more like suggestions than rules.
And there was the jukebox. Everyone who’s been to Anchor talks about the jukebox: an old fluorescent thing—a centerpiece, really—illuminating the shadowy space. Behind the rainbow lights around its exterior lay a trove of old tunes that often started conversations, and friendships. Richards recalls getting to know the previous owner, Marshall Moore, after playing a Bonnie Raitt song, “I Can’t Get Started with You.” Hall, too, said he would play a song and bond over it with the bartender. The jukebox was often free, so you could play song after song. Instant gratification, he called it.
The Anchor attracted a diverse group of New Haven residents. Locals and grad students mingled and chatted with bartenders. Hall recalls that the Anchor welcomed homeless individuals to sit and drink at their booths, and the bartenders were always kind to them. There were no tricks or deals or drink specials that catered to Yale students. “Maybe that’s just a hipster thing,” Hall said. “But I think it could be a human thing as well.”
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From the outside, the storefront is striking: a blue overhang bearing the Anchor’s name in fluorescent lights and an iconic yellow anchor jut out into the street. The distinct front window is shaped like a pill capsule, which once offered a view into the cozy interior before the front pane was covered with a frosty residue post-closure, blocking the inside of the bar from view.
The New Haven Preservation Trust and Urban Design League hope to preserve the bar’s unique façade, which features “Art Moderne elements that are relatively rare in the city of New Haven and are worthy of preservation,” according to John Herzan, preservation services officer at the trust. Whether the restaurant front will be preserved onsite or moved to another location has yet to be determined, though Herzan says keeping the façade onsite is important to maintaining its authenticity. “When things get dissected and reassembled,” he said, “they tend to lose their meaning.”
Herzan says this particular type of preservation, called “commercial archaeology,” poses a dilemma: How do we preserve objects and settings—like the Anchor bar or even an old McDonalds—when they no longer serve their intended purpose? A business might be willing to open shop under a previous tenant’s storefront, but it depends on the tenant that University Properties chooses. “If it were another restaurant, they could adopt the name ‘Anchor’ and continue that legacy, but the merchant would have to see the name as an advantage,” Herzan said. “Whether they do or not remains to be seen.”
Hall says he hopes this type of revitalization occurs with Anchor—but noted, with trepidation, that similar ownership transfers in the past have not preserved the character of old-time favorites. Another beloved bar, Rudy’s, transferred ownership in 2010 and moved from its original building to a new location on Chapel St. where it transformed from a neighborhood bar to a swankier restaurant. According to the New Haven Register, two regulars of the original Rudy’s wanted to restore the bar’s grittier atmosphere and opened Three Sheets in the same location as the original Rudy’s on Elm St.
When I asked him about preserving the façade, Hall said it seemed like a meaningless gesture that, if anything, emphasized the half-hearted attempt to preserve the past while racing forward to newer, more glamorous enterprises. “It seems like a good metaphor, he said. “like ‘let’s leave up the old brickwork’ but not really do anything about what’s going on.”
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Richards says this pattern of gradually swapping out of old favorites for upscale replacements is something that’s been happening in New Haven more frequently since the 90s. And according to Richards, with New Haven’s gentrification has come a decline in dialogue between New Haven locals and the Yale community. “I like college towns,” he said. “You get people from all over creating work together or at least discussing ideas. And that used to happen here. There was a greater sense of collaboration between Yale creative people and local creative people. It doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.” Richards said that the Anchor closing was the last straw in this long-standing problem.
The old 1960s photographs on the Anchor’s paneled walls reflect a time in New Haven’s past when the city was changing. They show the parking lots, playgrounds, and highways that Urban planner Robert Moses brought with him to usher the old city into a new landscape, a new vision of the future. Fifty years later, New Haven’s landscape is changing again. New retailers and restaurants have sprung up especially in the past five years, and Yale University Properties will likely have no problem finding a new tenant to pay rent on time. Like everything else in the Anchor, these photographs of a city in transition will soon be removed and placed in boxes. They’ll be discarded or maybe sold to former patrons.