A
look at the Automobiles of Norwalk, CT
over the years.
By Mark Milosky
When
I was a young boy I had a friend named Rob Tobin. Rob at 4 years old
would
ride in the back seat of his parents' 1959 Rambler and point at the
cars & call them off by make
and model. I was 5 then and was very impressed by this. We were neighbors
& grew up in Norwalk during the
1960s and 1970s. We stayed friends and he got me interested in vintage
automobiles.
In the early 1970s The Norwalk Hour published a small column by Tad
Burness called Auto Album.
Each week the Auto Album would feature a different vintage automobile
with a drawing of it and interesting
facts about the car. We cut these out & kept them in scrap books
that I still have today. Another friend
and neighbor named Mike Concordia became interested and also collected
them.
In
the early 70s I thought it would be fun to go out on our bicycles &
take photos of vintage cars
around Norwalk and vicinity. I started out with a cheap Kodak 124 instamatic
camera. After a while Rob
and Mike also got cameras & started to take & catalog our snapshots
in albums. Eventually I worked my way up to a used Miranda 35 MM SLR
camera and with another friend & neighbor named Jim Taylor we built
a darkroom & learned to develop & print film. I used an old
1950s Remington typwriter to label the photos.
We
certainly learned a lot about the differences between years and models
of vintage cars.
Digging through the archives I have found a good number of these photos.
Some being in poor quality so I had
to convert them to digital images & then enhance them so they would
be nicer to look at.
I
would like to share these memories with you. If you live in or are familiar
ith the Norwalk area I am
sure you will enjoy looking at the photos. Especially what is in the
backgrounds of the pictures. It is a time capsule.
I did not think I would ever be able to share these or that anyone would
ever be interested in seeing them.
Most of the cars you will see were daily drivers or old rotting hunks
of metal awating someone to come
and rescue them or send them to the crusher down at LaJoie's Junk Yard!
Most
of the photos
photos were taken between 1973 and 1978 with some earlier and some later.
At the time the pictures were taken many of the cars were worth only
a hundred to a few hundred dollars.
Cars were being sent to the crushers with a couple of hundred dollars
worth of damage to them!
Boy, if we could go back in time and buy them up! Who knew what they
would appreciate to.
Most of the pictures were taken in parking lots, behind gas stations
or on the streets of Norwalk. I put in some other intersting historical
photos of Norwalk for your enjoyment as well.
I
hope you enjoy the photos!
Mark
Click on any photo to enlarge
|
 1937 Buick Main St., Norwalk |
|
|
 1940 Buick Main St. & Union Ave., Norwalk |
|
 1947 Buick Trumbull Mall |
1949 Buick Trumbull Mall |
 1950 Buick Connecticut Ave., Norwalk |
 1950 Buick |
 1954 Buick Ferris Ave., Norwalk |
 1954 Buick Ferris Ave., Norwalk |
|
|
 1954 Buick |
|
|
|
 1957 Buick Trumbull Mall |
 1960 Buick |
 1960 Buick |
1942 Cadillac Norwalk Library |
1942 Cadillac Norwalk Library See the Calf Pasture Window Stickers |
 1954 Cadillac Route 1, Stamford |
|
 1956 Cadillac |
 1956 Cadillac |
 1956 Cadillac Pathmark Mall |
Rob's 1957 Cadillac Spring Hill, Norwalk |
|
|
 1978 Cadillac New at the Dealership |
 1978 Cadillacs New at the Dealership |
|
1940 Chevy |
 1941 Chevy |
 1947 Chevy Woodie Connecticut Ave., Norwalk |
 1949 Chevy |
 1951 Chevy, Caldor, Route 7 Norwalk |
 1952 Chevy Trumbull Mall |
 1952 Chevy Route 1, Stamford |
1954 Chevy off North Taylor Norwalk |
|
 1956 Chevy |
1955 Chevy Post Road East Westport |
 1956 Chevy Southport Automotive Southport |
|
 1957 Chevy Bradlees Connecticut Ave. Norwalk |
