Once a vibrant thoroughfare, it never quite recovered from the riots of '68 in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, and various exhibits at the museum (including a graphic history of lynching in the basement) only serve as reminders of still-raw civic and national wounds.
Wounded, wounded, wounded!
Nearly two months after the shooting spree in Colorado that left 12 dead and 58 wounded, survivors, civic leaders and generous citizens are confronting the victims' traumas and a future of costly care.
There is also the wound to the civic body.
That's exactly what happened at Denver's 4/20 celebration in the city's Civic Centre Park, non-lethally wounding two people, grazing another with a bullet and injuring a dog.
The wound to the country's civic health remains fresh, though of course it is active, committed Democrats who feel it most keenly.
Like the cells of a wounded body, individual New Yorkers knew that their civic duty was to find a fast track back to normality.
"It's not that complicated," the mayor said in his office, a tense, busy place as he reaches out to church, business and civic leaders to treat what he sadly terms a traumatic wound.
The inquest at Southampton Civic Centre heard Lt Cdr Molyneux suffered a single gunshot wound to the top of his head.
