Remembering the past; moving into the future
Allow us to wax nostalgic for a few moments. As announced in the Voice, the publication has moved from its iconic 666 Savin Avenue address to an office at 840 Boston Post Road. The reasons for the move were both practical and the confluence of several other factors.
Since the ownership of the Voice was reorganized in 2017, there has been talk of making a move to office space owned by one of the principles in the new corporation. The move became necessary when the owners of the 666 Savin Avenue property realized that changes in its own business structure necessitated the basement area the paper occupied. So, it would be accurate to say the move was both amicable and mutually necessary.
For those not aware of the history of the Savin Avenue site, it was originally the home of Seth Taylor, the Town of West Haven’s resident undertaker more than 100 years ago. The basement was the kitchen, while the living space occupied the first and second floors. The attic was reserved for the servants.
When Robert Joyce purchased the West Haven Town Crier in 1970, he moved it from Center Street to the 666 Savin Avenue location. It had long been abandoned as a home and converted to office space. Joyce rebranded the paper as the West Haven City News to focus on the recent recognition of West Haven as a city. He also was an officer in the now defunct Eastern Hockey League (of New Haven Blades fame) and ran both the publication and the league’s business out of the site.
The basement was the production room, where pages were put together in the era of computerization. Those state-of-the-art cut-and-paste methods are now considered primitive.
When he sold the paper to Citizen Publications in the late 1970s, the offices were still on the second floor. At the same time, a new publication, The West Haven Towne Voice, was founded by longtime News editor Colby Dreissens. The paper was short-lived as Dreissens passed away in 1979, and its surviving owners determined to close.
The City News became the West Haven News, and remained in the 666 Savin Avenue location until it was bought out by the New Haven Register in 1995 and moved to that paper’s Long Wharf location.
It was two years later some former News employees saw the need for a new publication to fill the void for what had been lost. While the Register’s owners had continued to print the paper, the local focus had been watered down. Enter the West Haven Voice, which took its cue from the Towne Voice of decades past.
We remained there until just a few weeks ago, when the move was finally completed. It is not an easy thing to move 22 years’ worth of accumulated memories or work. For almost 50 years, the 666 Savin Avenue location was the site of a town newspaper covering West Haven. For that it became iconic in the minds of many, including those of us who worked there.
We look forward to working in this new location, and continue to strive to serve our community by giving it the coverage it cannot find anywhere else, either in print or in other media. We miss our old digs, but have hope for the future, hoping this new location will become an icon for future generations.