For nearly 50 years, Sports Haven was a familiar sight along Long Wharf and to drivers on the I-91 and I-95 interchanges. Now, the iconic New Haven sports betting facility is being demolished.
People have stopped by to watch and take pictures as parts of the building come down. For almost 50 years, Sports Haven was a destination for people looking to place bets on horse races and other sporting events.
One of the curious watchers was Theresa Lucibello, whose father spent much of his time at Sports Haven after it opened in 1979.
“Since the first day it opened, honest to God, we used to say he’s gonna have the front row seat and it’s going to be gold,” Lucibello said.
The demolition has been difficult for her father, she said.
“He hasn’t been the same since they took it down because he doesn’t like the other place,” she said.
Even if you never stepped inside, Sports Haven was known for its exterior: the enormous horse murals painted on two sides of the building by artist Tony Falcone. The roughly 100-foot-tall horses were seen by millions of people traveling through the area over more than four decades.
Falcone said the mural became a way for people to know they were home.
“Some people would say, you know, if I was out of town and when I came back over that bridge or came by the mural, I knew I was in New Haven,” he said.
Creating the mural was a painstaking process. Falcone spent about a month sketching the artwork before taking another three weeks to hand-paint it on the building. He had to mentally enlarge the sketch by about 3,000 percent to transfer it onto the building.
“If you were to take just the eye, and the highlight -- the dot on the horse’s eyes -- I used a four-inch roller pad to do the dot on the eyes,” Falcone said.
The mural ended up being 100 feet tall and 70 feet wide. Although Falcone said he is disappointed to see everything come down, portions of the artwork are being salvaged by the Lost in New Haven Museum.
Founder Robert Greenberg said pieces of the mural will be saved to help future generations understand the scale and significance of Falcone’s work.
“What we're doing at Lost in New Haven is salvaging some of the mural to show scale for young people to learn about Tony Falcone's beautiful mural,” Greenberg said.
Some autographed pieces will also be available for sale at the museum.
For Falcone, it’s comforting that part of the artwork will survive.
“But knowing that it's living on is like, what more could an artist want?” he said.
The demolition has left many longtime Sports Haven faithful sad at the loss of such a familiar place.
“It’s kind of heartbreaking because it’s not just his father that’s affected, it’s all his friends too,” Lucibello said.
Some hope for new life on the property. Greenberg said the site could become an important part of the city’s future, and be repurposed for retail, residential development and a park.
“This is going to be a very important site for the city of New Haven,” Greenberg said.