Old haunts, lost and found

Mark Zurolo ’01MFA

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Kim O'Malley

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The god of nostalgia giveth . . . and he taketh away. Yalies past and present were saddened this October when the owners of Wall Street Pizza (top) closed down their beer-and-slices joint (previously known as Naples Pizza). Besides being a late-night destination since the 1970s, the place also catered to a daytime crowd, serving its famous rice pudding and cinnamon toast. There’s no word yet on what will take the eatery’s place in the Yale-owned building.

On the other hand, alums of a certain age were heartened by the return of the Old Heidelberg (above), the restaurant and bar that had filled the basement of the Hotel Duncan from 1959 to 1991. The Duncan was reborn this fall as the upscale Graduate New Haven Hotel, and although the basement had served 30 years as a Thai restaurant, the room and its fixtures were mostly still intact. So the new hoteliers brought back the Old Heidelberg as a bar with a pub menu. Even the sign over the bar is still there; who remembers what IITYWIMWYBMAD stands for?