Picture Windsor Locks - Then And Now

WINDSOR LOCKS, CT — This periodic informal series highlights businesses from Windsor Locks' past, and what those locations look like today. The Windsor Locks Library has painstakingly had most Windsor Locks High School yearbooks digitized on archive.org, and this column features advertisements from the past pages of The Herald.

Today's trip down memory lane takes us back exactly half a century to page 110 of the 1970 edition of The Herald. LaRussa's Furniture and Appliances was located at 136 Main Street in the old F.S. Bidwell building between Spring and Oak streets. Founder Angelo "Al" LaRussa had opened his first store in the Thompsonville section of Enfield in 1945, and later added the Windsor Locks location.

Al's wife Ann was vice president of the business, and their son Ron later worked alongside him for 25 years. In the 1970s, the building was torn down as part of the Main Street revitalization project.

To further confuse matters, LaRussa's was a different business than D.F. LaRussa's, a similar store a few doors down at 170 Main Street on the northwest corner of Main and Oak. That business, which later moved to become the first tenant at Dexter Plaza, was owned by Dominic "Don" LaRussa, Al's brother.

Al LaRussa passed away in Dec. 2002 at age 94. His wife had died in Feb. 2000, and Ron died at 81 in Sept. 2019.

In 1986, a small 4-tenant strip plaza was built between Spring and Oak. It currently consists of a CVS Pharmacy, Windsor Locks Liquors, Subway and Dunkin' Donuts. Here is a contemporary look at the property today, courtesy of Google Maps.

Do you have a photo of an old Windsor Locks business which no longer exists, to which you own the copyright, and which we could feature in this column? Email tim.jensen@patch.com.

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