The Healing Journey

October 11, 2026

The poem “Crescent Arms” is a reflection by Brian D. Wallace on his late grandparents, Bill and Mal, who once owned famous Crescent Arms boarding house in Bridgeport. In the poem, he asks his grandfather, “What happened? I would like to know…as if in finding you, I fill a space in my soul.”

Crescent Arms

By Brian D. Wallace

Bill, we drove by your dream looking forlorn
the incessant traffic washing up like a tide
through the concrete canyon blasted for Rt. 25
Leaving only one half of Washington Avenue between
The Crescent Arms and the abyss.

My father warned us to leave the past alone
And Mal had Phil burn all her papers
Knowing for sure that we’d be poking around
But the post cards survived and a few letters
And that’s what we have of you, Bill,
Your voice, your words,

the boarding house you tried to make a go of,
rooms to let by the week or month
with the Depression pulling up to the front door
and making a big show of registering
with no intention of paying
and you eventually losing it all
by putting it up for collateral
on a housing scheme gone bust

Maybe if I didn’t drive by it every day–
a Barnumesque folly with Moorish turrets
and onion domes—
I wouldn’t think of you at all,
but there it is, your great sandstone tomb
stately, incongruous, serene
though you died in a rented room
and are buried in another town

The “Edinburgh Crescent” was built by a Sanford
for American royalty
and already faded by the time you took over
the center section.

Your dream failed before the paint dried
In this working man’s city
spared from the wrecking ball
when it was rehabbed as communal housing
for people who have nowhere else to go.

It’s a kind of draw Bill—you didn’t know us
And we know you as a riddle;
born eight years after your death
into a world that almost makes your life unimaginable—
the hard times, the daily hard scrabble,
The sense of defeat and betrayal
What happened? I would like to know…
As if in finding you, I fill a space in my soul
Though you closed the door on it all
I keep coming back to where you left off.

“You kids don’t know how to live,” Mal said
once when we asked about what you were like
Suggesting you burned through several lives
In Brooklyn, on Pine Creek, on the run
Solider, carpenter, fly-by-night dreamer
Convinced you could pay it off and make it big
My father named his youngest son after you
And later regretted that it might have been a jinx

“You knew he was either going to make a million
Or end up with nothing,” Uncle Phil once told Barry
Dismissing the little bit we had of you
So we the grandsons you never knew
Went searching and found
This language of loss and absence
Leaving your story and ours unfinished
grateful for the hard life you bequeathed us
in Mal’s quiet sigh and my father’s confusion.

I saw an eight millimeter home movie once
of my father sliding down the railing
of the massive Crescent Arms front entrance
Moving right toward us in the frame
As if being swept up in your arms, Bill,
And we could reverse time in your embrace
But you were never there for him
And you lost the place soon after that,
Leaving us all on the landing
Waiting for you to come back.

You and Mal went on the run,
staying one step ahead of the treasury
who tracked you from state to state
demanding payment
As it was, you would never outlive the debt
Coming home to Bridgeport
with just enough time to die,
after picking up work
in Houston, Detroit and Yonkers…
Felled by a stroke when you stood over the sink

No one who drives by that building could possibly know
What happened to us as a family once
Mal lived the next fifty years of her life alone
Left to tell bittersweet stories of dreams turned to stone.

(Editor’s note: Built as an upscale row house in 1889, the Edinburgh Crescent on Washington Avenue is one of the most handsome buildings in Bridgeport. The brownstone brick building was designed by architects Longstaff & Hurd, a Bridgeport firm that also designed the somewhat eccentric Barnum Museum in the same Richardsonian Romanesque style.

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