A piece of history from the Northeast’s oyster industry is leaving New Haven, Connecticut and heading to New York, where it will get a new life.
Earlier this month, work began to deconstruct a more than 100-year-old oyster barge. What was once used in New York in the 1800s as a floating sales room for oysters from Connecticut.
The barge, which has been on the Quinnipiac River Marina in New Haven for the last few decades, was once part of a large group of oyster barges between the East River and the Hudson River, Robert Greenberg, a historian, said.
“It’s the last remaining example of its type that we know survives,” John Herzan, of the New Haven Preservation Trust, said.
The boat fell into disrepair after the bar it housed closed in the 1980s.
“It was land-bound and it was used for all these different things in the city of New Haven, Fair Haven, from bars, to speakeasies, to garage storage,” Lisa Fitch, owner of the Quinnipiac River Marina, said.
Now, two brothers from New York plan to restore the barge and reopen it.
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“Put it back onto the water and hopefully put it back near the Brooklyn Bridge, where it came from originally,” Fitch said. “It’s going to be saved and that it will be, it will have its part as a museum piece. Because that’s what it is. It’s a museum piece. It has a lot to offer historically and tell a nice story.”
Reopening the barge will be an expensive and time-consuming project, but those who have watched it languish for years are excited about the possibility of new life for the historic vessel.
“Going back to New York City will be able to educate the public as to this fabulous industry, about the oyster industry that used to exist,” Greenberg said.
The deconstuction is expected to be complete by early May.
