A couple of months ago, I fielded a reference question about 1410 Highland Ave, the current location of The Butcher Bros Steakhouse. This patron wanted to know which restaurant was there about 35 years ago.

Questions like these are not uncommon, but there’s usually enough information online to find a quick answer. Searching online, I uncovered what many Cheshire-ites already know: 1410 Highland Ave became The Butcher Bros in 2023, Bone in Prime opened there in 2021, and Perfectly Prepared Catering had a run from 2018-2020, closing due to COVID-19. At some point before Perfectly Prepared, that location was Cugino’s Pizza (a fact some helpful staff members were able to help me out with). Everything before Cugino’s was a dead end, so I turned to our local history collection on the library’s lower level. It was time for some good old-fashioned research!

My reference resources of choice were the local directories. These directories were published yearly and our collection includes most editions from 1965 to 2020, covering Cheshire, Hamden, North Haven, and the entire New Haven County at various points in its publication history. These books, and our entire local history collection, are available for anyone to use in-library on the lower level.

The directories are filled with all kinds of fun information. Did you know Cheshire had 3,253 telephones in 1956? And 8,404 telephones by 1968?! Okay, maybe not the best example of how fun this information can be… Still though, quite a few telephones!

But back to the research question: What’s the history of 1410 Highland Ave? I flipped to the Cheshire section of these directories and searched by street name. I was thrown for a loop in 1984 and 1983, which is when that portion of Highland Ave was still called Milldale Rd. You’ve got to be on your toes with this kind of thing.

I narrowed my search between the years of 1983 and 1997 to get a comfortable range around the “35ish years ago” goal. Even within this 15 year period, there’s a lot of action!

I got in touch with the patron who requested this information and we decided the restaurant they remembered was likely Vigilio’s. The best kind of mysteries, however, only lead to further questions—this one is no different. What happened between 1991 and 1993 when there was no information submitted to the directory? What is Spindrift? Where is Michael Anthony now? And most importantly, what is Twilight Zone? A coworker vaguely remembers a club called Twilight Zone, but I can find no information to back that up. Whatever the case, this research shows that even the most unassuming of questions can be an adventure.