*© 2010 RC deWinter ~ All Rights Reserved

The long stretch of Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut is divided into several enclaves. The North End has traditionally been an area where poor working people, the homeless and the mentally ill released from Connecticut Valley Hospital – just a few miles away – congregate. The St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen, the Community Health Center, and a halfway house for parolees are just a few of the social service organizations located there.

But the North End is also home to artists and an arts center, a diverse collection of newer shops and markets – many of them ethnic – and the famous O’Rourke’s Diner, part of the Main Street Historic District listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Here we see some of those shops, with bare trees on the sidewalk in front of them and living spaces above them, standing undisturbed in the glow of bright streetlights.

Subtly-textured digital oil painting from an original photograph shot April 2, 2010.*