Orchowsky Butcher Shop

830 Grand Avenue (former)

830 Grand Avenue in 2021. Photo courtesy Aaron Goode.

Born in Russia in 1878, Jewish immigrant Isaac Orchowsky operated a butcher shop and kosher meat market at 830 Grand Avenue. He lived above the store with his wife and four children, all of whom worked in the store. An empty lot next door (now Lenzi Park) was used for slaughtering chickens. Orchowsky’s was one of several kosher butchers operating in the Inner Grand Avenue neighborhood in the early 1900s, including Bailey’s and Epstein’s. Kosher butcher shops not only fulfilled a religious obligation for observant Jews, but also served as a kind of communal “watering hole” where religious and nonreligious Jews alike could kibitz and exchange information. In the early 1930s Orchowsky moved his market farther out Grand Avenue to Fair Haven. He died in 1940.

Isaac Orchowsky’s nephew was the acclaimed jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw (1915-2009), who grew up nearby and assisted his uncle in the meat market as a youth, practicing his C-melody saxophone in the back of the shop. (Only later did he switch to clarinet.) Artie dropped out of New Haven High School at 15 and left New Haven to become a touring musician. After becoming world-famous for his big-band recordings of tunes like Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” the clarinetist wrote about growing up in the Inner Grand Avenue neighborhood, and his early artistic influences in New Haven, in his acclaimed 1952 autobiography The Trouble With Cinderella: A Study of Identity.

After the departure of the Orchowsky Meat Company, 830 Grand housed a tie store and then a furniture and upholstery company. It is currently used by Project MORE, a social service agency.