USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 12
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The original or upland part of the park, which was acquired in 1891, is laid out in lawns and borders of modern or old fashioned flowers. In one corner
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is a fine old oak tree. with spreading, drooping branches, where the children love to play, and their parents love to sit on the circling benches and take in the shaded breeze. In the opposite corner is a children's playground, with swings, flying rings, see-saws and other paraphernalia. Down the bank toward where Chapel Street runs out past the Yale Bowl is an artificial lake, where black and white swans sail grandly, and ducks stand interestingly on their heads, while they pull worms out of the bottom. Then the park strikes the river, and its meadows make a straight course on either side toward Whalley Avenue. There is a good supply of fine drives.
The late Felix Chillingworth was in a sense the father of this particular park, and was the urger, while serving on the Board of Aldermen, of much of its development. lle was also instrumental in the digging of the "Chilling- worth well" at the east end of the park, and to it many pitchers came in the days when water from springs under the growing city was deemed safe for drinking purposes. The park also contains a most attractive rose garden and arbors, and its floral attractions are steadily heightened as the years pass.
It is the most accessible of the larger parks of New Ilaven, in one of the best of its residence districts, and naturally is visited by more people in the year than are any of the others. Its name comes from that which "the master of Edgewood," Donald G. Mitchell, whose home for decades was in the south- western part of Westville, give to his estate and the surrounding region.
In the New Haven of thirty or forty years ago there was a section that did not then look as though it would soon be an ornament or advantage to the city. to say nothing of being good residence territory. It was the "slaughter house distriet" at its northwest corner. Here was a low sand plain where was the slaughter house that provided the city with meat in the days before the western packing houses took all that responsibility. Stretching for a mile or so beyond it was an area of swamps and ponds, habitat of the beaver in the earlier days. habitat of the mosquito in any days. The whole region, in fact, was productive of mosquitos and flies if not of malaria. At the time when New Haven's park development really began, it was in erying need of redemption.
The upper part of the old slaughter house seetion was first taken, and more as fast as it might be improved. It was an expensive task. and the park depart- ment has never been over-supplied with funds. But gradually the waste has been reclaimed, and through gift and purchase the park, which was no more than a name for many years, recognizable as a park only on the maps, has assumed impressive proportions and appearance. There has been of late years the double purpose of building a park and eliminating one of the worst mos- quito-breeding territories in the city. The swamps and marshes have been drained, the underbrush of the wooded parts has been eleared up, and new trees have been set where trees were needed. In the older part, the section now assumes the appearance of a park, with something like walks and lawns. There are football and baseball fields and general provisions for a playground. The total area now held here by the city puts Beaver Ponds into the first class of
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New Ilaven's parks, with about 120 acres. It is the purpose of the city to considerably inerease this area.
Beaver Ponds Park, which now stretches from the junction of Goffe and County streets all the way to the Ilamden line, is in a seetion of the eity which is bound to develop and inereasingly need a park. It has almost boundless possibilities, for the work which has been done so far has been mostly of the necessary sort, and the ornamental development of this large and somewhat diversified area is yet to begin.
So much for New Haven's woodland and inland parks. It is a seaside city, and might be expected to have some notable marine parks. It seems to be the fate of seaside eities not to appreciate their possibilities. It is New Haven's misfortune, which it shares with most of the New Haven county coast towns, that it has permitted private ownership and enterprise to monopolize some of the best of its shore, of which it has none too much. New Haven has, nevertheless, some excellent seaside and waterside parks, most of them capable of extended development.
"Oyster Point" they used to call it in an earlier day. Now that point of sand past which the channel of West River finds its tortuous way out to the harbor is "City Point." It is at the foot of Howard Avenue, an excellent residence street. On the southeastern side of this is Bay View, a finely developed marine park of over twenty-three acres, which the eity aequired in 1894. It has wide and sloping lawns, and in the midst of it is a pretty lake basin, while shrubbery and trees, and seats enabling the wayfarer to rest in the shade and view the sea, add to its attractiveness. There is one drive which gives a good opportunity for seeing the park and the view.
Only a block away from this park, on the West River side of the Point, is another traet which should be taken with it, though the park department is pleased to elass it with eity squares. That is the Kimberly Avenue playground, of seven acres, which is yet in an nndeveloped state. It has great possibilities as a seaside playground, though bathing facilities are unfortunately lacking from both this and Bay View Park.
Around the older part of the harbor district of New Haven has grown a con- gested residence district, largely inhabited by citizens of foreign origin. No section more needs breathing spaces. Here, running from the center of Water Street out to the harbor front, Waterside Park does its best with its 171% aeres. In 1892 the city began the laborious task of filling in the mud flats to make this park. Now it has a good surface of firm land, permanently protected by a sea wall, with seats and walks and a good start of protecting trees. There are play- grounds for the children who abound in the district. From the water end, one gets an excellent idea of what the busiest part of modern New Haven's harbor looks like.
Halfway down the east shore of New Haven harbor there is an eminenee whose basaltie cliffs jut sharply into the water. It is ealled, of course, the Palisades. Commanding a sweep of the whole month of the harbor, its strategie advantage did not escape the authorities who felt the necessity of proteeting
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New Haven from invasion. Here they built a fort, which they named in honor of Nathan Hale. This was especially developed at the time of the Civil war, and the old earthworks built at that time are there still. There are about forty-nine aeres. This is territory varying from low meadow to the cliff's of the Palisades, Of this the New Haven park department holds and has developed about thirty acres. This is territory varying from low meadow to the cliff's of the Palisades, which are directly on the water front. Fortunately, this traet ineludes some of the best sandy bathing beach around New Haven, and here the city has ereeted a considerable number of public bathing houses, whose facilities are improved up to and beyond their limit through the bathing season. In many ways, Fort Hale is one of the most faseinating of the city's parks.
A short distance due northeast of here, at the southern point of the eminence which constitutes "Fair Haven Heights," is a point where it seemed to the patriots of New Haven in 1812 there ought to be a fort to repel British invasion. They threw up and armed their earthworks, and named it "Fort Wooster," after Gen. David B. Wooster of Revolutionary fame. The grass-covered ruins of the old fort show there today, and it gives name to Fort Wooster Park, a highland traet of seventeen acres, giving an almost ideal view of the Sound. the harbor and New Haven. Beacon Hill is an eminence whose opportunities well repay the short climb from where the trolley line passes on Woodward Avenue, or there are excellent drives running all through the park. Much of it is well wooded, and there has been some attention to landscape improvement.
Just beyond where the old Yale boathouse used to squat on the flats as Mill River crossed East Chapel Street, there is a triangular plot of land called Quinnipiac Park. A few blocks beyond. the Quinnipiac River comes down to meet the harbor, and this is a sort of eove which comes in to meet Mill River. There are only eleven acres of it, being limited by Chapel Street, James Street and the harbor, but it is in a congested distriet that greatly needs a park. For the most part it is used for playground purposes, with little effort to develop any scenie effect, but there are seats where the weary ean rest and get the harbor view. They used to be able to watch the Yale erew paddling around in the cove and coming to and from the boathouse. Now they see them at a little distance around the new Adee boathouse.
Fair Haven proper is as yet inadequately provided with parks, but it has an excellent foundation for one in Clinton Park, the newest development of the system. Here are twelve acres, extending from Atwater to North Front Street. and having a frontage of 1,300 feet on the Quinnipiac River. It is just opposite the point where the stream swells to a lagoon or bay half a mile wide, making a body of water beautiful for view, excellent for boating and in all respeets attractive. The Quinnipiae up to this point and beyond is really an arm of the harbor and scoured by the tides, so that here is a body of elean salt water, excellent for bathing as well as boating, and having a good beach.
Clinton Parkway, a tree-shaded green covering the space between the inner sides of Peck and English streets, and extending eight bloeks westward from the river to Ferry Street, makes a most attractive approach to this park. The Vol. 1-7
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Clinton Playground, covering the square bounded by Clinton Avenue, Maltby, Grafton and Chatham streets, is only two blocks south of the parkway.
II
New Haven has nineteen city squares, counting everything. Most of these, from the central Green down, were included in the jurisdiction turned over by the city to the park department on January 1, 1912. The Green has already been described. Next to the Green, in age and general importance, is Wooster Square, bounded by Chapel, Academy, Greene and Wooster streets. When it was opened in 1825, it was in the heart of the fashionable residence section of the city. It was a second Green, with its almost five acres similarly laid out, neatly feneed, probably with the same square-railed type of fence that seems to have been thought good form for greens. The stone posts and iron rails have displaced the white rails some time since. The square today is in the heart of the district occupied by New Haven's 35,000 or more people of Italian blood. It is adorned by an excellent statue of Christopher Columbus, which was presented to the city by its Italian citizens to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his great dis- covery.
Jocelyn Square is a nice little miniature green of 2.60 acres occupying the city block between Walnut, Wallace, Humphrey and East streets. It is equipped with playground apparatus, and serves an important purpose in one of the older crowded portions of the city.
. Trowbridge Square is a bit of land between Cedar, Carlisle, Portsea and Salem streets. It measures 0.83 of an acre, and is equipped with some swings and other playground apparatus. A breathing spot in a congested district.
Of the nature of the Green in their origin, and dating back to before the establishment of the park system, are the two Broadway squares. They are triangular bits which come in where Broadway spreads like a fan into Goffe Street, Whalley and Dixwell avenues. One of them has a small soldiers' and sailors' monument, in granite. Together they contain 0.87 of an acre.
An irregular spreading of Goffe Street, between Foote and Orchard, makes a grass plot of 0.75 of an aere, which affords a playground to children and is known as Goffe Square.
Hamilton Square is a long, narrow, enclosed strip on Hamilton Street, be- tween Loenst and Myrtle. It contains 0.55 of an acre.
Monitor Square is a handsome, feneed-in bit of green at the point where Derby Avenue leaves Chapel Street, the triangle between these two streets and Winthrop Avenue. It is adorned by, and in fact was created to shelter, the distinguished Bushnell-Ericsson memorial, erected to commemorate the service of Cornelius S. Bushnell, a son of Madison and New Haven, in making financially possible the building of the historie "Monitor." The square has 0.33 of an aere of ground.
A minute bit of green at the triangle of Henry, Munson and Ashmun streets is called Henry Street plot. The surveyor says it contains 0.02 of an acre.
SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, EAST ROCK PARK. NEW HAVEN
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Temple Square is where the electric ears swing down the grade from Whitney Avenue and presently find themselves on Church Street. It is bounded by Whit- ney, Temple and Trumbull. and measures 0.14 of an aere.
Kimberly plot is another microscopie triangle containing all of 0.02 of an acre, at the junction of Kimberly Avenue and Lamberton Street.
State Street plot, just twice as large as the above, is a little strip on State Street, at the junction of Lawrence and Mechanic.
Away out near No. 1 Chapel Street is 0.06 of an acre of spare space between Ferry and Houston streets, so the city turfed and curbed it and called it Ferry Street plot.
Clinton Parkway and Clinton Playground, already deseribed, are parts of ('linton Park. They contain together 6.1 acres.
Kimberly Playground has already been mentioned in connection with Bay View Park. It contains seven acres, irregular in shape, and imperfectly de- veloped. It has great possibilities, when filled and properly graded, for athletic use.
Edgewood Parkway. eounted for 4.45 acres, is a broad and handsome mall which leads westward for several blocks as an approach to Edgewood Park, and is now a part of it.
Sherman plot. of 0.03 acres, is another convenient triangle. at the point where Sherman Avenue begins in conjunction with Winthrop Avenue and Oak Street, which it was more desirable to turf over than to pave.
Defenders' Square is as near an approach as it was possible to make to a historie spot. It is only 0.64 of an aere in area, but it is near the place where the defenders of New Haven did their best to withstand the British invasion of July 5. 1779. It was not from the view of the threatening eannon which stood there, with its determined gun crew, that General Garth got the idea that New ITaven ought to be spared for its beauty. In 1906 an effort was begun to secure an appropriation from the Legislature for help to build a monument to these defenders. A plaster model, in miniature, of the proposed group, which was placed in the lobby of the capitol at Hartford, received the compliment of being called by President Luther of Trinity, who was first a state senator in 1907, "a six-legged monstrosity." It is a modification of that group of three men. in life-size bronze, which now adorns Defenders' Square.
Ilere, in all, is a park system consisting of ten publie parks, with a total area of something over 1,074 acres. To it are added nineteen city squares, which include the eentral Green and the two playgrounds, and increase the area to 1.111.03 aeres. They are well distributed over nearly all seetions of the city, so far as the limitations of the situation permit. They inelude some of the most unusual city parks in New England. an equipment of which no city of New HIaven's size need be ashamed. The city squares alone, which inehide the im- mensely valable central Green property. have a real estate valuation of $3.676.035. The parks themselves, not being subjeet to taxation, have not recently been appraised.
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CHAPTER XIII
NEW HAVEN'S CHARTERS
IIISTORY AND PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT FROM 1784 TO 1917-CONSOLIDATION OF TOWN AND CITY AND THE HOME RULE ACT-RECENT REVISION EFFORTS
I
Charter making, as a science, is modern. The charter, or more correctly, charters, which served as the legal foundation of New Haven in the years from 1784 to the end of the nineteenth century were framed mainly on the eonstitu- tion idea. They did not, at least at the first, conceive of the city as a business institution or corporation. Nevertheless the eity was made a corporation by these charters, and gradually acquired, in spite of this idea, a body of laws fitted for business management. Some study of the development of these laws forms an instruetive background for the understanding of the modern eity.
If the original founders of our New England cities had not been so ready to conceive of the eity as necessarily limited in area, a condensed portion of the town within which it was included, considerable trouble might have been saved in later years. Yet it seemed and probably was necessary, in forming the City of New Haven ont of the somewhat rambling town that New Haven was in 1784, to be eoneise and eonstrieted. So it was that the original bounds of the City of New Haven, as limited by the charter, read narrowly to us today. The western boundary was high-water mark on the east side of West River; the eastern was high-water mark on the east side of the harbor (continuing up Mill River as a boundary line, presumably) ; the southern a line running from City Point to Lighthouse Point ; and the northern a line from Neck Bridge to the Whalley Avenue Bridge over West River. This, leaving the separation from Hamden somewhat indistinet, made the original New Haven a somewhat re- strieted "chunk" of land with the Green, as at the first, practically in its center.
But it was in other respects that the first charter really was primintive. Per- haps the idea of the mayor continuing in office without further election was not altogether wrong, but it surely was wrong to make the General Assembly the power to determine his tenure of office. Four aldermen and a common conneil of not more than twenty, were elected, and they were real eity fathers. For observe some of the things they were required to do: Choose jurors, lay out highways, he the city court for the trying of eivil and criminal cases, and to
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legislate by-laws for such matters as markets and commerce within the city, streets and highways, wharves, anchoring and mooring of vessels, trees planted for shade, ornament, convenience or use, and their fruit, trespasses committed in gardens, publie walks and buildings, sweeping of chimneys and prevention of fires, burial of the dead, publie lights and lamps, restraining geese and swine from going at large, defining the qualifications in point of property of the mayor and the aldermen, fixing penalties for anyone elected to office and refusing to serve, determining the mode of taxation.
It was an admirably condensed charter, albeit crude. It lasted thirty-seven years without radical revision, and it is not a little surprising that in that period it seemed necessary to the people of the city to make only nine amendments, most of them such as were inevitable to the growth of the developing city. The revision of 1821 seems to have been at the motion of the General Assembly rather than due to a feeling in New Haven that a radical change was necessary. A uniform charter was passed for the eities of Hartford, New Haven, New London, Norwich and Middletown. In each case it defined the territorial limits of the city (and New Haven's was not, so far as appears, then changed). It provided for annual meetings in each city to choose a mayor and four aldermen, but the former was still to hold office at the pleasure of the General Assembly. A com- mon council of not more than twenty was also elected annually. There were also other elected officers, and various provisions necessary to the management of a city, the whole being a decidedly more modern document than that which New Haven adopted in 1784.
In the next thirty-six years there were twenty-six amendments to this charter, the first important one limiting the term of mayor to one year (though the General Assembly still had the right to remove him sooner). At the same time there was an effort to do something for the defining of street and building lines. There were steadily developing provisions for the fire protection of the city. A provision was made in 1843 for dividing the eity into wards, but for some reason was repealed the following year. Wards were established, however, in 1853. Each was to have one alderman and five councilmen. In 1856 there appeared a publie worry lest something should be done harming the integrity of the Green, for it was provided that there be no erection of any building on any of the publie squares, even if the Proprietors' Committee did authorize it.
Six wards were provided by the charter of 1857, each with an alderman and four councilmen. The municipal officers were somewhat as now elected. The Court of Common Council elected the street commissioner. Great and arduous duties were still imposed upon this court. though of course it needs to be remembered that the population of the city was then only 36,000. Many de- tails lately adjusted by ordinance were still the concern of the common conneil. It had also to arrange for the municipal appropriations.
The city was developing fast, however, and eleven years later it seemed necessary to make another revision. Meanwhile, there had been twelve amend- ments. In this period the population of the city had so run over the edges as to make legislation for the town, and the beginning of confusion necessary.
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Six of the amendments concerned the town, one of them providing for two outside wards, each with its alderman and four couneilmen. In 1860 was incorporated the Westville School district, which still is a kingdom of its own. The city was glad enough, however, to have in 1861 the help of the town in the erection of a city hall.
The revision of 1868 re-defined and slightly changed the boundaries of the city. It was bounded on the cast by Mill River; on the north by Hamden; on the west by Dixwell Avenue and the east bank of the West River to Oyster Point, then up by high-water mark to Tomlinson's bridge. This was reappor- tioned into six wards. At the same time it was decreed that aldermen and councilnen should sit as separate bodies. Then also was created a board of finance, a road commissioner and boards of fire and police commissioners, the police department being at the same time definitely created. It appears also that at this time the fire department was exalted (though perhaps some of the members did not so regard it) from a volunteer to a paid status. This charter was duly amended in the following year, and it was found necessary to make a revision in ninety-three sections of it. It was then made a crime for an alderman or a councilman to accept a fee for his vote ; the mayor was given veto power. But of chief importance were the seetions changing the provisions as to the City Court, and further raising the salaries of mayor and city officers, which had been elevated only the previous year. To obviate the necessity of a revision every time this popular change seemed desirable, it was therewith provided that a two-thirds vote of the common council might inerease salaries.
Then followed ten years very busy with amendments. No less than fifty, most of them of a routine nature, were adopted before the revision of 1881. One highly important one, in 1872, was the establishment of a board of harbor com- missioners, of five persons appointed by the governor. This aet also defined the limits of New Haven harbor. A board of health was established for New Haven in the same year, consisting of six persons, three of them physicians, to be ap- pointed by the mayor.
In 1872 the Borough of Fair Haven East was incorporated out of the Town of East Haven (for the Quinnipiac had until then been the eastern boundary line of the town). It is interesting also to note that in this busy legislative year a ferry was incorporated to run from "a convenient point in the City of New Haven to Lighthouse Point."
The increase of the number of wards of the city to ten came in 1874. Also the common council was authorized to divide the wards into voting districts. It was at that time that the time of the city election was set for the first Monday in October, the term of office being two years. All appointments were to be "yea" and "nay" by the common couneil. The chairmen of the existing eom- missions were at that time made ex-officio members of the board of aldermen and conneil, but could not vote. The city was divided into twelve wards in 1877, and the time of election was changed to the first Tuesday in December. The number of voting districts was increased to thirteen shortly after.
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