Costello Avenue

Costello Avenue runs through the residential and commercial fabric of Derry, connecting the Derry Public Library to the Costello Avenue Market and the Kleen-Kloze Washateria. For the children of the Losers' Club, it is a street of ordinary errands and sudden danger, a place where the routines of summer vacation—buying candy, doing laundry, walking to the library—collide with the predatory violence of Henry Bowers and his gang.

Geography and Setting

Costello Avenue is a semicircular street that rejoins Kansas Street near the Derry Public Library. The library itself stands at the corner of Costello and Kansas Street, a stone building that Ben Hanscom visits on the last day of school in June 1958. The Costello Avenue Market, a penny-candy store where Ben trades bottle deposits for sweets, is located a block farther down the street. The avenue also borders the Barrens; at one point the land drops away steeply, and a rickety whitewashed railing runs beside the sidewalk as a token barrier. From this railing, Ben can see the Kenduskeag Stream, the Derry Standpipe, and the circling seagulls over the town dump. The Kleen-Kloze Washateria, where Beverly Marsh, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Stanley Uris take the bloodstained rags from Beverly's bathroom, is located on the corner of Main and Cony Streets, a short walk from Costello Avenue.

Encounters with the Bullies

Costello Avenue is the site of two violent confrontations between the Losers' Club and Henry Bowers's gang. On the last day of school in June 1958, Ben Hanscom walks down Costello Avenue after visiting the library, carrying his library books and a postcard with a haiku for Beverly Marsh. As he pauses at the railing overlooking the Barrens, Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins, and Victor Criss ambush him. Henry carves the letter "H" into Ben's stomach with a Buck knife, and Ben escapes by falling backward over the railing into the Barrens. Later that same day, after Ben has hidden in a root-cave and then emerged to help Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak, the three boys walk together to the corner of Kansas and Jackson Street, where they split up. Eddie Kaspbrak, his shirt bloodied from a nosebleed Henry gave him, follows Ben's advice to buy chocolate milk and pour it on his shirt to disguise the bloodstains from his mother.

A second attack occurs on July 20, 1958, when Eddie Kaspbrak, his arm already broken by Henry Bowers, is cornered outside the Costello Avenue Market. Henry, Victor Criss, Moose Sadler, and Patrick Hockstetter are kneeling on the crushed gravel beside the store, pooling their money. When Eddie comes out with a Pepsi and two Payday candy bars, Henry grabs him, shoves gravel into his face, and breaks his arm. The attack is interrupted by Mr. Gedreau, the store owner, who tries to intervene but is pushed aside by Henry. Eddie escapes when a police siren sounds, and Mr. Nell finds him lying on the sidewalk.

A Place of Errands and Memory

For the Losers' Club, Costello Avenue is also a place of ordinary childhood errands. Ben Hanscom stops at the Costello Avenue Market on the last day of school to trade bottles for candy, buying red and black licorice whips, rootbeer barrels, a strip of buttons, Likem Ade, and Pez. Later that summer, after the apocalyptic rockfight, the Losers' Club walks along Costello Avenue to the Kleen-Kloze Washateria, where they wash the bloodstained rags from Beverly's bathroom. The washateria is empty except for a woman in a nurse's uniform, and the four children sit in plastic contour chairs, watching the suds turn reddish in the washer's porthole. The street also appears in the memories of the adult characters: when Bill Denbrough returns to Derry in 1985, he walks past the ruins of the Derry Mall, which stands on the site of the old Kitchener Ironworks, near the intersection of Costello Avenue and Kansas Street. The mall's destruction during the storm of May 31, 1985, is part of the larger collapse of downtown Derry, a catastrophe that reshapes the town's geography and ends the cycle of violence that began with George Denbrough's murder.