Columbus Day highlights Springfield South End history

Link to October 11 Springfield Republican article.

Excerpt:   They watched one landmark after another get boarded up, burned down or bulldozed into rubble.

Not just bakeries, markets and hardware stores, but playgrounds and homes, too.

“We stayed in our house as long as we could - until the bulldozer was knocking on the front door,” said Richard “Skip” Rousseau, recalling his family’s collision with the Interstate 91 highway project in the South End.

When the six-lane interstate sliced through the heart of the South End in the 1960s, the tight-knit, largely Italian-American enclave was pulled apart, with hundreds of families forced to find new homes across Springfield or the suburbs.

Others left later, as the residential, working-class identity of the city’s Little Italy was eroded by vacant buildings, arson, and blight.