USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 24
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That great and growing hole, covering as it grew the space of twelve and one-half acres, was an amazing sight as the summer of 1913 grew old. There stood a great confusion of derrieks and cement mixers, piles of tile and stone and lumber, with men and horses and machines of various sorts creeping around them in apparently the most aimless sort of way. That confusion lasted until
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the coming of winter foreed a cessation of the work. It did not clear materially when spring came again. But before the work had ceased for the winter the lower part of the structure had begun to take a shape intelligible to the eyes of one who understood the plan of the work, and that plan was not difficult to comprehend.
The excavation was to be elliptical in the proportions of a football gridiron, and to extend about as far beneath the ground level as the embankment rose above it. The entrances were to be at the ground level. On each side was to be a large gateway, for football teams or vehicles. There were to be thirty portals, tunnels through the embankment, arranged at equal intervals all the way around the structure, for the entrance and exit of the thousands who should occupy the seats. The whole interior of the excavation was to be lined with a substantial plating of eement, rising in steps, to which the seats were to be bolted. The portals and larger entranees were to be floored with the same material. There was to be a eement coping between the lower tier of seats and the playing surface, and a cement retaining wall around the foot of the en- bankment on the outside of the structure.
Such, in brief, was the plan. Before the work ceased for 1913, the excavation had been finished, the eement construction of the entrance tunnels was well in hand and the structure was ready for the interior casing of conerete. It was desirable to allow the winter to do its work in settling the newly exposed earth and the thrown-up embankment before going further. That embankment, as it proved, had over a year in which to settle, and then the engineers found that its depression amounted to only a fraction of an inch. It was not a structure that was going to slide or cave.
The following spring, which was the fateful year of 1914, when "the great war" broke upon the earth, the work proceeded rapidly. The retaining wall was first built, and from then on the structure began to assume form, and soon after, comeliness. For the next thing was the grading, and after that the sodding of the outer embankment and of the gridiron within. All summer and early fall this grass was watered and smoothed and eared for, and by November the turf on the playing field was ready to resist even the two hours' strain of striving steel- shod feet, resulting from a championship football game. It eame out of the ordeal in good shape, considering.
Then there was the cement surfacing of the lower part of the interior and the placing of the seats. It was thought best to defer the cement covering of the upper half, partly to postpone the heavier part of the work and expense, partly to allow the embankment to settle all it possibly could. The apparently satisfactory working of the structure without this completion, together with the interruption of college athleties by the war, has delayed the completion of the cement easing until now. That may, possibly, be a part of the greatly increased seating arrangement which may be found necessary in the coming years.
Yale's foothall amphitheater, as it stands at present, is a structure covering, as has been said, twelve and one-half acres. The base of the excavation is
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twenty-seven and one-half feet below the level of Yale's new field. It rises a corresponding distance of twenty-six and one-half feet above the entrance level, making a total depth of fifty-four feet. Measuring over the outer retaining wall the structure is 930 feet long by 750 feet wide. From the erest of the embank- ment it is 800 by 600 feet. The gridiron and the level surface inside the seats measures 500 by 300 feet. Though the lower part of the excavation extends to a depth below ground surface at which springs are expected to be found, and though the location is not high ground, so carefully has the matter of drainage been planned for that never has there been the least trouble with dampness, even when using the gridiron soon after a rainstorm.
The spot is in many ways a picturesque one. The longer axis of the ellipse points nearly north and south. To the northward, towering West Rock stands ever as a watchful sentinel, while in the western distance rise the hills and woods of "Edgewood," long the home of the patron saint of the whole neighborhood. From the "parapet" lies spread a view of the city and harbor, while in the other direction are rolling country and the Maltby lakes. The appearance of the embankment from the distance, and still more on nearer approach, is that of a fort, and to imagine that those thirty portals screen great disappearing guns is not difficult.
But such considerations as these have come later. The first thought for the football enclosure was that of utility. It must seat many thousands. Sixty thousand was the builder's first idea. That number was slightly inereased when the regular seats were placed. and the press stand, with its accommodation for newspaper men and photographers from far and near, added several hundreds more. So equipped, the structure seemed more than ample for the crowd which would come that first year. But long before the time for the game with Harvard, it was found that graduate applications and public sale would run far beyond the more than 60,000 seats provided, and it was necessary to build 7,000 more seats around the rim. Thus the first game on the new gridiron was witnessed. all told, by more than 70.000 people. It was supposed that this large crowd was due to the novelty of the thing, and that those temporary seats would never be needed again. So, as they marred the symmetry of the upper works, they were taken down after the game. But in 1916, when Harvard played in New Haven again, the pressure was worse than ever. Not only were the upper temporary seats again placed, but extra seating was put in the space within the football enclosure itself. It is probable that from 72,000 to 73,000 saw that second game with Harvard. From a Yale standpoint, it was worthy of the multitude.
Accommodation for such gatherings as this places this amphitheater in the very front rank of the gathering places of the modern or the ancient world. Of old the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus surpassed it, more or less according to tradition. We have no accurate means of knowing whether they seated all the crowds accorded to them. or whether they seated them all at onee. Other structures built in England or elsewhere for the accommodation of football
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crowds have held more people, but standing, not sitting. The Yale stand seats all whom it receives, and seats them comfortably and advantageously. Other colleges in this country are planning to outdo Yale in this, but up to the present writing none has provided a structure comfortably seating so many people, and no other stadium or amphitheater approximates to the facilities for conveniently gathering, seating and safely dispersing a crowd possessed by that designed by Charles A. Ferry for Yale.
ITI
The wonder of it has dawned slowly. It was at once recognized to be unique among athletic structures. What should it be called ? It was a "bowl," of course, but that term, while it might pass in slang, did not at first meet the approval of the academic mind. Stadium it was not, properly. Amphitheater was a good old elassie term, but too unwieldly. Coliseum was out of the question. So for convenience they began to call it "The Bowl." It was expected to be a temporary name, but like the temporary seats, it elung, partly from necessity, more from fitness. It is interesting to look back and notice how the term has gradually taken on dignity, until "The Bowl." spoken wherever Yale football is known, has become one of the most honorable of names.
So has the structure endeared itself. if such a personal description may be applied to it, to Yale men and friends of Yale near and far. The first thought for it was that it would hold the crowds, surely in safety, more or less in com- fort. It was expected, of course, that there would be a wide difference in the accommodation it gave them. Those nearest the center were expected to be especially favored. Those on the edges-at the skyline-as even the designer feared, would greatly need spyglasses. For it was to be remembered that from the rear seats at the end of the ellipse to the opposite end of the goal line was a physical distance of over 800 feet. In the old stands there were some very undesirable seats. It must inevitably be so in the new one.
But it has not proved to be so. The facility with which every play of every game could be seen from every seat has been the growing wonder of those who have tested the Bowl from all its parts. It is true that those who sit at the points nearest the side lines see the players in life size, and are able to recognize some of them without field glasses. But it has been a question whether it was better to see the game in that way than it was to have the advantage of the greater altitude and see it in miniature. There is an effeet, from the upper rows of seats, somewhat like a view from an aeroplane. And with a good glass, the doings in the center or at either end of the gridiron are perfectly seen from every one of the 65,000 seats. There is not a "blank" in the whole collection.
The ease with which the greatest crowds in our football history have been seated in the Bowl, and the orderliness with which they have been dispersed, have more than met the expectations of the builders. There has never been anything like a blockade or a jam. There is a separate entranee and exit for each 2,000 people, and seats are easy to find. When the game is over, the great multitude
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goes its thirty different ways withont confusion and without any appearance of mass. It is only when one sits in the great Bowl with every seat filled, with one solid lining of humanity wherever the eye ean reach, that he gets an ade- qnate impression of the vastness of the assemblage. That, indeed, is a sight long to remember. It is in itself a wondrous feature of every great football game.
For all this, the Bowl has twice failed to hold without a strain as many as would see the great games. Of the future one can only guess, but there is every prospect that the coming years may early find it totally inadequate in seating capacity. In such an event, the designer has a plan. He would build, around and over the upper half of the seats, a structure like a theater balcony. He believes it possible to construct perhaps 40,000 more seats in such a way that all will have a view of the field, and without in any way marring the seats already there. This would, however, possibly mar the symmetry of the structure, and would of course cause greater congestion of entrances and exits.
But football does not exhaust the wonders of the Bowl. It has been tested in other ways, with surprising results. The open air play had been an institu- tion in many other colleges long before the Bowl was built at Yale, and it was natural that the new structure should tempt the trial of such a thing at Yale on a greater scale than elsewhere. It worked out in the presentation, in May of 1915. of Euripides' "Iphigenia in Tauris." Some 15,000 people from the Uni- versity and from New Haven saw the production, one end of the Bowl and gridiron being devoted to it. A stage and sounding board were erected, but there were many who doubted that, even with the aid of these, any except those nearest the front would be able, in the great open space, to distinguish any of the spoken words. What did happen seemed like a marvel. For the Bowl de- veloped the most surprising acoustie effects. The spoken word was heard with a distinctness almost uneanny in every one of the seats.
This was a development which surprised the designer as much as anybody. He had anticipated nothing of the sort. He, like most others, had deemed it an impossibility that ordinary sounds should reach to the farthest seats. But it has proved that there is something about the solid construction, something in the concave formation, which makes possible the reflection of sound, distinctly and without confusing echo, to all the seats which face the stage.
Again, something like a year later, the Bowl had a still more trying test. New Haven, then and now, lacked an adequate place for the production of grand opera. Everard Thompson, then the manager and promoter of all Yale athletic events and many of Yale's musical attractions, eagerly seized the opportunity which the Bowl offered to arrange for the production of Wagner's "Die Walkuere," with some of the finest of grand opera stars in the cast. On a rare evening in early June the production was staged, and though less than half of the Bowl was used, it was in size sneh a gathering as New Haven had never had before for a musical performance. And again the acoustic effects astonished all the observing. The transmission of the musie was well nigh perfeet. Little
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of the foree or shading was lost, while much was added from the thrill of the open air and the charm of a summer evening.
Then there was the Pageant of 1916, the crowning glory of the Bowl up to now. The story of that has already been told. But for the Bowl it would not have been possible in anything like its triumphant success. But for the Bowl, the people of New Haven and the regions round about it would never have participated in it as they did. And nothing in its history so far has so well demonstrated the Bowl's greatness. It was a spectacle par excellence, and for spectacles, above all, the Bowl is designed.
But we always return to the game; the game's the thing. For that the Bowl was built, and for that it will mostly be used, though its success for other uses suggests that many new uses will be found for it. The dedication of the Bowl. when Yale met Harvard in 1914, was a tremendous success from viewpoints of crowd and spectacle; it was a monrnful occasion to those Yale men and their friends whose happiness depended on a victory for Yale. It was Harvard's privilege to light up the goal posts with red fire on the occasion of that first game, and Harvard was ready to improve it. But there came another time. Two years later, the story was different. The tables were gloriously turned, and the Bowl had a real dedication.
The interruption of Yale athletics caused by the war made the Bowl a de- serted, mournful place in the fall of 1917. Or it would have been, but for the army camp hard by, and the omnipresent utility-making of preparation for war. More than once in that summer and fall the Bowl served the cause of democracy, as it had served many times before, as it will serve unnumbered times, no doubt, in the years to come. There is no gathering place within the city that has such a meaning for New Haven. In it great multitudes can be gathered, entertained, thrilled. All the football games of the seasons of 1915 and 1916, great and small, were held in it, and opportunity was given to every- body to participate. To spend an autumn afternoon in the open air, watching some hopeful football team from a smaller college give Yale some excellent train- ing for the great game-not infrequently give it a lesson in the vanity of human pride-with the thrill of a multitude attending (it is not unusual for one of the minor games, in these days, to have an attendance of 20,000 people or more), is an experience that makes life an immensely more valuable thing. They come from the far corners of the state as well as from New Haven, some- times, to see these minor games, and all are well repaid. It is generally an ex- perience for all eomers that adds greatly to the joy of living.
No mention of the Bowl is complete if it omits the part which Everard Thompson, who was Yale's governor of the games, in important ways, when the Bowl was built, had in its development. He approved of the design from the first. His clear eye saw its possibilities from the viewpoint of public accommo- dation. When it neared completion in the fall of 1914, he cheerfully essayed the task of filling its 63,000 seats. IIe did his work so well that there were more than 70,000 people ready to fill the seats before he knew it. He provided the
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seats, too. To prepare and arrange tickets for 70,000 people, to get the tiekets to them and get them to their seats, was a physical task of no small proportions. Mr. Thompson met it. lle developed a system that has been the admiration of all who have known of it. Ile handled a staggering situation, and meted out justice and satisfaction to all.
Nor shouldl mention be omitted of William V. Bedell, who took up the work when Mr. Thompson lett Yale. The problem of seating and satisfying the publie who wanted to see the Yale-Harvard game in 1916 was, if anything, more difficult than at any previous time. But Mr. Bedell. in a way all his own, solved it so as to win the respect of even the disappointed.
But after all. the Bowl's growing success, and its promise for the future, which is great, redound to the credit of the designer. A quiet, modest man, on whose head the years sit lightly, misses few of the events which take place in the Bowl .* All of them are a part of the dream he dreamed-a part of its fulfillment. Hle cannot afford to miss them. Charles A. Ferry admits that he builded better than he knew, but those who know him best believe that his sue- cess was due to no accident, no lucky hit of genius. It is true in more ways than are dreamed of in our philosophy that
"The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight ; But they, while their companions slept Were toiling upward in the night."
* The Bowl is now the property of Yale University. On February 13. 1918, Thomas De Witt Cuyler, '74. Chairman of the Committee of Twenty-one. formally handed the property, which up to that time had been the possession of the incorporated Committee, over to Yale. The original cost was supposed to be $300,000, but more than that had been expended on it up to the time of transfer. All the money had been secured from the subscription of graduates and others.
CHAPTER XXHI
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS IN TURNPIKES-THE MOUTH OF AN INTERESTING CANAL- STEAMBOAT AND RAILROAD LINES-NEW HAVEN AND THE TELEPHONE
I
The swiftness of our twentieth century is best appreciated by looking back- ward a little. Only in that way can we understand how many wonderful things we are taking as a matter of course. In nothing is this as true as in the matters of transporation and communication. And in respect to these, there has been in New Haven's history no period to be compared with the past thirty years.
Yet New Haven and its region thought thirty years ago that they had made a marvelous advance, if they looked backward. The eity and its surrounding towns were wrought out of a trackless wilderness. In 1638 their isolation was so real that they deemed the territory of less than a hundred square miles of which New Haven was the center sufficient for the making of a state. Hartford, the nearest rival, was a good two days' journey distant, while the nearest considerable points to the east or west were as safely far away. But if other events had not quickly come in to break up New Haven's notion of sufficiency unto itself, communication would soon have done it.
For communication was inevitable. Trails and bridle paths radiated in all directions from New Haven before the colony was a decade old. The people would not remain solitary. Expansion and adventure were in the air of the New World. The constant growth of new settlements, farther and farther from New Haven, made this inevitable. The people had relatives, friends, acquaintances, in the other communities. And between these points of interest there must be ways. That was the beginning of communication, and later, of transportation.
The history of an older time has traced the development of this process. The trail gave place to the bridle path, the bridle path in turn was displaced by the turnpike. And the turnpike was a more ambitious thing than we are wont to think. For instance, there was that New Haven-Derby turnpike, notice- able because it was the remnant of the old tollgate system which many of those now living in New Haven can remember. When that was projected in 1798. a company was formed with a capital stock of $7,520 to build eight miles of highway. and received a charter from the legislature. It was not such a won-
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derful highway, either. It was a gravel roadway that made "causeways" through the swamps and bridged the rivers. Road building, as we know it, had not then been imported to this country. But the road was good enough so that they seemed to be warranted in charging people a good, round sum for the privilege of traveling over it. Evidently the company made money, too, judging from the fact that it chung to the toll privilege until 1888.
This was, in the first half of the nineteenth century, but one of a dozen or more turnpikes which radiated from New Haven, the only means, up to the coming of the railroad, of common travel. Well might New Ilaveners, when the last tollgate was abolished, regarding their railroad and street railway and steamboat lines which established communication to and from New Haven at all points of the compass, deem that great things had been accomplished, and that they had reached the truly modern age.
We look back from today and smile at their notion that they had arrived. Even then, they might have considered their established telegraph, their just developing telephone. the prophecy of the electric car which was already in the air, and realized their infancy. But if we are inclined to contemn their erude development, or scorn their lack of belief in greater achievements ahead, we may well regard our wireless, our still imperfect motor vehicle, our inadequately realized flying machine, our lack of knowledge of the possibilities of electricity, our very unsatisfactory steam and electric railroads, and humbly await a day of better things.
11
New Haven's transportation development, up to now, has been mainly through steamship lines, steam and horse and electric railways. But before the rail- road really came to New Haven, before the horse railway was thought of, while yet the steamboat was in its beginnings, there came to Connecticut what has been called the "canal fever," of which New Haven felt very marked effeets. Canals had been developed in New York State early in the nineteenth century. They had, seemingly, proved a success above all other methods of transportation. New Haven had the water ontlet to the broad sea. If New Haven might have canal connection to the northward, reaching into the commercial and industrial State of Massachusetts, New Haven commerce would have a great boon. So it eame about that there was constructed that interesting eanal from Farmington to New Ilaven whose traces still remain in the city itself and in the region northward all the way to Cheshire and Southington.
It has mostly been forgotten now. It hardly belongs to the period which this history covers. But there are some things about that canal which the present
. generation has forgotten. and they are fascinating ones. Close to a century ago it was conceived, and transportation and traveling conditions then were such as to make its possibilities appeal to the imagination. The railroad had not eome to Connecticut. Good roads, as we conceive them now, were dreams only. The traveler over the highways that were was an almost constant tribute yielder.
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The fast post-coach which covered the distance from New Haven to Ilartford in six hours, was the aeme of speed. On the other hand, there was the broad river Connecticut, free of tollgates, always, except in winter's hibernation, a smooth and convenient highway. Rivers, even handicapped by crooks and shoals, were ideal highways. Why not make one that should be straight and sufficiently deep ?
Such was the condition, and such was growing to be the thought, when early in 1822 representative citizens from seventeen towns, New Haven being promi- nent among them, met at Farmington and voted to make a preliminary survey for a canal and raise one thousand dollars for the purpose. The Farmington Canal Company was chartered in the following May. Though it was named for Farmington, and though it would appear that the movement started from that end, New Haven seems to have been the moving spirit in it. Indeed, there was not a little mention of it at the time, particularly at Hartford, as New Haven's scheme to rival Hartford as a river port, and have its own river reaching from the Sound up into the heart of New England. They said scoff- ingly at Hartford, it is reported, that New Haven had a plan to divert the waters of the Connecticut from flowing past Hartford, and turn them on to their own mud flats, on which, added the jester, their own shipping usually stuck fast.
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