USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 8
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The electric light had come. New Haven by 1890 was well lighted. as eities went. Are lights made its streets, according to the standards of the time, conveniently navigable even on a rainy night. But electrie lights for interiors were still rare. Many of the publie buildings, and partienlarly the churches,
LIGHTHOUSE POINT, NEW HAVEN
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VIEW OF MORRIS COVE, NEW HAVEN
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were gas lighted as late as 1905 and afterward. And when in 1912 the "White Way" was agitated, making some of the central streets brilliantly lighted ae- cording to modern standards, there were business men who shook their heads. Five years later, the city took over the "White Way" as a matter of course, and has since extended it to other streets as unquestionably worth its cost in safety and business advantage.
Shore expansion had come. Up to 1895, New Haven had Savin Rock-which belonged, and still belongs to West Haven. Not so long before that. it had meant a ten-cent expenditure to take a ride to Savin Rock, less than five miles away. But it was not a residence shore resort. It was in the closing days of the century that the real development of the East Shore began. There were a few pioneers there in those days, who thought they were hardy if they braved the mosquitoes for three months in the summer, but professed to get enough advantage to make up for them. Now Morris Cove is a ward of New Haven eity, filled with cottages all the way from the Palisades to Lighthouse Point, with many side streets well developed, and a large part of the former cottagers living there all the year.
The West Shore now seems to be a part of New Haven, though most of it is in Milford. In summer time, it is a part of the greater New Haven, and many of the residents of the city have handsome shore places there. Some are tempted to, and many do, live there all the year.
But it is more to the point that expansion has come to New Haven itself. centrally. It was not long after 1890 that the name "Westville" began to mean something besides far Whalley Avenue, and Martin Street was renamed " Edge- wood Avenue." Edgewood Park was not, but the ride out Edgewood Avenue into Westville, when the new trolley line was opened, was like travel into a newly discovered country. In the somewhat over two decades since. Westville has become the most important suburb belonging to New Haven. It has preserved its own individuality in many respects, and has its distinet school and social life. but it is a convincing proof of how New Haven has outgrown its former boundaries.
Industrial expansion had come. The "important factories" which in 1890 could almost be counted on the fingers of two hands, if one's memory were good enough, had become over half a hundred major coneerns, well known abroad, if not in New Haven. It was frequently being remarked by the observ- ant, indeed, that New Haven was not getting full eredit for its importance as a manufacturing center.
Most important of all, New Haven had startlingly changed in population. The 23.000 addition to its number between 1880 and 1890, and the almost equal increase by 1900, were not additions of "native stock." The 40,000 foreign born, and the 43,000 native born of foreign parentage, which were found in 1910, had been coming. In 1892 there were Italians enough in New Haven to raise money for a fine statue of Columbus on Wooster Square, and shortly after that it was estimated that a fifth of the population of New Haven was Italian. At that time they constituted, however, only one in fifty or more nations and . tribes to be found distinctly represented in polyglot New Haven.
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Did the city adequately appreciate all these changes? Apparently not. Some of them had been too rapid for it. It knew it was growing and changing, but it did not think it essential to catalogne its progress. Not all the people recog- mized it as progress. Like all conservative cities, New Haven had some citizens who regretted many features of the change. They were contented with the old order. They were not especially enthusiastie over the new. The old elms sufficed them. For the new ideas they did not especially care. But the new ideas were bound to come. The old elms, as we may later observe, were not bound to remain.
The date of the renaissance is difficult to set. It began gradually, probably about the time of the Yale Bicentennial. New Haven got some of its new vision from that. Leaders in thought and vision followed up the advantage. Yale's poliey of participation helped. The Chamber of Commerce came out of its eentury's dream, and that helped more than anything else. The Civic Federa- tion, the Business Men's Association, the Publieity Club, all joined in the effort. New Haven had come into a new era. Now it came to consciousness of the fact.
II
What is this New Haven of contrast, the New Haven of today ? It is a eity profitable for comparison with the crude center of the colony, or even with the smug, unconscious New Haven of the latter eighteen hundreds. It is a city which impresses the beholder who comes from without more than it does the accustomed beholder who lives within. A distinguished engineer, a few years ago, called New Haven, as a port, the key to New England. Here, at length, is a center of New World commerce, a railroad center, a potential shipping center, such as Theophilus Eaton, even with old London in his vision, never conceived in the wildness of his dream. Here is the water gateway to the busiest freight section of the East beyond New York. Here is the water outlet for the intense New England manufacturing section, immensely important now, having far greater possibilities for the future.
Much of this is in the future, no doubt. For the present here is a city esti- mated to have 175,000 people, in the center of a district whose facilities easily reach 200,000 more. Within a radius of a hundred miles are upward of ten millions of the people of this country. It has more industries than any other city of Connecticut or southern New England, and some of them, at this par- tievlar time, are of immense magnitude. It has a greater variety of products than many cities several times its size. Railroads, centering here, radiate to New York and Boston, and to all the important manufacturing and supply and trade eenters of New England. It has steamboat lines which supplement its railroad facilities. It has a harbor that is the admiration and despair of many a eity of the South and West that does three times New Haven's business. To make it. the city eneireles a bay that runs in nearly four miles from Long Island sound. and is almost a mile and a half in width. It has not anything like a uniformly navigable channel, but mueh has been done to deepen it, and there
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is a field for much more effort. The channel now existing is from 300 to 400 feet wide and more than twenty feet in depth, allowing vessels of large draught to reach the doeks. Improvements in both channel and dock facilities are being constantly made.
New Haven of today is a clean city, with well paved and well kept streets, with hundreds of miles of modern, uniform cement sidewalks. It did not always boast of these things. Up to 1909, a policy of mistaken economy had retarded street pavement until the city's needs had got ahead of it, and the miles of uneven, unsafe, archaic briek sidewalks were far more conspicuous than the comparatively short stretches of the modern type. But New Haven had a permanent paving commission made up of men with good ideas, and about that time the city adopted the policy of giving it a free hand. Discarding all the wrecks and failures of the past, the commission decided on two, or at the most three types of pavement as sufficient for the city's varying needs. For the streets of heaviest traffie, wood block. For streets of moderate traffie, asphalt, either laid on new foundation or laid over an old foundation of substantial macadam. For other streets, tar-bound macadam as a general type.
The improvement in sidewalks is a monument to Frank J. Rice, mayor of , New Haven for seven years. When first inaugurated in 1910, he pledged him- self to seek. among other things, better sidewalks. He tried to accomplish many things, and did accomplish numerous notable ones, but one of the most conspieu- ous, if not the most important was the more than 200 miles of the best type of sidewalk which he caused to replace briek or broken asphalt in the city he loved, and to whose service he gave up his life.
The city is comparatively elean because of a custom inaugurated in 1908 by the Civic Federation, known as "Clean City Week." It usually coincided, at first, with the Easter vacation in the schools, and the service of the pupils, boys and girls, was enlisted in the effort to use their influence to the end of clearing back yards, vacant lots and obscure streets of unsightly or unsanitary refuse. In addition, the boys were enlisted as inspectors. They visited all back vards so far as possible, all vacant lots and other repositories of rubbish, and reported the condition of those whose owners had not responded to the public appeal to elean up. At the end of the week another inspection was made, and progress, if any, reported. Meanwhile, the eity had done what it could. In especially stubborn cases, the aid of an ordinance was invoked. In 1916 the eity took over this work, and carried it on through the schools. Volunteer eitizens visited each school on the Friday before Cleanup week, preaching the gospel of consistent eleanliness, not negleeting to emphasize its high advantage. The results have been evident and abiding.
Almost every moderate sized eity is called by its enthusiasts a "city of homes." New Haven has never very conspicuously made this elaim. It has been, in recent years. a city of mueh building, largely of residences, in addition to many notable publie and business edifices. The gap toward Westville, by either way of approach, has been almost entirely filled up. Residences have spread out almost to the city limits in the Yale Field direction. Two notable Vol. 1-5
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instances of this effect are often mentioned. Somewhere about 1900 the people at the west end of the city were alarmed because Roger Sherman School was placed so far beyond them, in the far edge of the residence district. Now the residences have spread so far and so numerously beyond it that the city has been compelled to make the Barnard School, which stands for its part on "the far boundaries of civilization," draw off some of the district's surplus school population.
In 1899 the people of the College Street Church, on selling their building to Yale University, were so daring as to select for their new building a site on tar West Chapel Street, at the corner of Sherman Avenue. In a sense, it was in the western wilderness then. Now Plymouth Church, as the new edifice is called, is on the eastern front of its field.
In other directions the population has spread out Dixwell Avenne far into Hamden, and out Prospect Street into the same town. Striking the encircling Hamden in another direction, Whitney Avenue is lined with comfortable homes alnost continuously from its junction with Temple Street to Mount Carmel.
It naturally follows that many. and probably as good a proportion as in most cities, of these new buildings are what might be called homes. Certain it is that the building and loan companies of New Haven are conservative, prosperous and sound, which tells something of the story. The habit of owning a two-family house in order to rent one part is very common, and judging by the appeals of the real estate men. very popular. The records of the savings banks, moreover, would indicate that whether the people are paying rent or buy- ing houses. they are saving money.
New Haven observed utility rather than art in the building of its industrial plants. Other cities long have sought to make beauty spots of their factory dis- triets; New Haven has not, as a rule. seen the use of it. It has followed the creed that if it produced the goods, the looks of the factory did not matter. Stern brick walls bound most of New Haven's factories and the rule is few lawns and no great amount of adorning ivy. In a word, most of New Haven's factories are ontwardly old fashioned.
But they are not so within, judged by their products. Manufacturing New Haven is practically up to the times. It is a city versatile in its industries. Time was when a single, or at most two or three lines of manufacture stood out as distinctive of New Haven. In a measure that is true now, but not as it used to be. New Haven is not a brass town. not a silver town, not a hardware town- no longer a firearms town. Yet it makes, in measure large or small, most of the lines of goods which give Connectieut eities their distinctive names. A list of the things that New Haven makes would surprise many citizens, but it would not long be remembered by many of them.
Let it suffice to know that New Haven makes toys as well as high class plumbers' house fittings, a large factory having recently been equipped for the manufacture of the former. New Haven makes a great many guns and explosive shells at any time-a tremendously increased number in this time of war. But New Haven also makes large numbers of modern pianos, and just outside the
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city, counted as a New Haven industry, is one of the famous pipe organ factories of America. New Haven corsets are advertised wherever women wear stays; it is not as widely known that New Haven makes a large line of electric elevators. Clocks and watches are among the historic manufactures of New Haven; the eity has a bird cage factory that is almost as famous in its way. New Haven, of course, because of the inventions here of Goodyear, was one of the original rubber towns. Its extensive manufacture of automobile radiators is more recent.
The list would be tiresome, but justice to the subject requires a glimpse of it. In addition to the things mentioned, there are made in New Haven fokling paper boxes, cigars, candy. geometric tools, dies, sewing machine attachments, fishing reels, pliers, drop forgings of all sorts, wire in every variety, printers' machinery, hosiery and underwear, aeroplanes and airships, spectacular fireworks of all sorts, concrete building stone, hack saws, saddlery specialties, carriage and automobile bodies, suspender webbing, safes, silk and silk skeins. Factories for the making of these and a hundred other lines of goods fill and overflow New Haven in half a dozen different directions. There are over 800 manufacturing establishments, with a capital of $12,000,000 invested in them. The endless variety stabilizes the manufacturing business in New Haven, since a dullness in one or even three or four trades has little effect on the varied whole. New Haven is very far from being a one-industry town.
New Haven has not followed the ideals of John Davenport religiously, but it has followed them intelligently. It has remained through all the years what it was at the first, a center of Congregationalism. Its fourteen churches of that order now include four distinct races of people not even conceived of by those who founded the sect. The ground which Congregationalism has held in New Haven has not been without a struggle, for the city, as we may observe, has grown cosmopolitan. Not only are more than fifty tongues and dialects. repre- senting almost every country of the world, found in New Haven, but they have brought their religions. And none of the important serts which have sprung up in America in the years since New Haven's foundations were laid is without its church of churches here, unless we except that Unitarian Church which has been Boston's rebellion against the strictness of the older order.
The early churches clustered on the Green, which was well enough while the city was small, and the people willing to follow the New England custom of "coming to the center" to church. Those built somewhat later went only a little farther from the heart of the city. So it eame about that in 1880 there were, on the Green or within two or three city blocks of it, five Congregational churches, the First Methodist Church, the leading Baptist Church of the city, the largest Catholic Church, three leading Episcopal churches. a Presbyterian Church and two Jewish synagogues. Ten churches centrally serving a population at that time about 63.000, was not a large number, to be sure, but it meant competition, not co-operation. For the population of New Haven had by that time begun to spread to distances which demanded churches in their own local- ities. A good part of it was in Fair Haven, and it had its own churches. West- ville was a substantial community, with its own churches almost from the be-
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ginning. Other outlying sections were well served by churches of the various denominations.
And now the church forces of New Haven began to contend with another change to which they were somewhat slow to adjust themselves. As we have seen, a large part of the additions to New Haven's population since 1880 were from other races than those which formed the support of the original churches. The effect of this was most noticeable in the Wooster Square section, which had once been the city's most fashionable residence district. On the harbor side of this section the Italians especially had begun to come, and as they grew numerous and strong, they pressed towards the square. They did not force out the old residents, exactly, for they had begun to move, but they pressed on them. New Ilaveners of the old line had not learned, then, what excellent substance for good citizenship there was in these new comers. To them all foreigners looked alike, except that Italians were especially obnoxious. They moved. They left, in the moving, ehureh buildings which not long before had held large congregations and active working forces. Instead of standing their ground, as some have done to "the glory of God and the blessing of man," these churches "scuttled," so to speak. Their congregations sold their buildings, and built elsewhere.
This was true not alone of the Wooster Square section. This is only typical. But what is more important, it turned the current of church movement along the lines of least resistanee, so to speak, all over the city. The churches no longer sounded imperative bells to call the people to worship. (There are comparatively few church bells in New Haven today, in fact.) Long sinee had the roll of the drum from the tower of the Meeting House on the Green lost its commanding power. The churches felt foreed to follow the commanding move of the people, which was well, in a way.
It has worked out fairly well for New Haven. It has helped in the breaking of the city into communities, which was inevitable, no doubt. The churches have, however, taken two courses. Center and Trinity and United have stood their ground on the Green. In the ease of Center, this was the only course. It was the original church. It represented, still represents, the identification of the ehnreh with the community which John Davenport established. Center Church has not become less a denominational institution. It represents, nobly, eonr- ageously, the principles of Congregationalism. But it performs in many ways a community service which gives it unchallenged leadership. In the very heart of New Haven its heavenward-pointing spire, its noble example of the interna- tional best type of free church architecture, stand to visualize the ideals of the church of God in the New World. In the heart of New Haven's people it stands, for many ages and many raees and many generations have found within its walls the spirit of brotherhood, the ideals of a social service above any church or raee or creed, which their souls have craved. Ably led, the mission which Center Church performs is for the saving of the people who have followed the paths .John Davenport's pilgrims trod.
In other ways not less noble and inspiring, some of the other churches have stood their ground. The notable example, in the Wooster Square distriet, is
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Saint Paul's Episcopal. This fine old church, placed in that part of the city to serve those of its faith among the old families of New Haven whose homes were around Wooster Square, faced the parting of the ways about 1900. Its people had in large part removed to other parts of the city, some of them remote. Those of other lands, other races and other languages and religious faiths had crowded around it. It must decide between the course which at least two other churches in the vicinity had taken, of selling its building and starting anew in some other part of the city, or of remaining in its place and becoming what has since come to be called institutional. This meant, in more ideal terms, that if it stood its ground, it would serve the people as it found them, in their midst, and in other ways than merely by its formal services on Sunday. It meant that it would, all in the spirit of its Master and Lord, serve mankind in many ways not included in the original New England conception.
Saint Paul's chose the latter course. It stood its ground. It kept on in the even tenor of its fine old Church of England ritnal, so far as concerned its formal services. It was served, then and since, by some distinguished leaders, and more than once seekers of bishops have turned their eyes in its direction. But its people were loyal. Some of the most faithful of its supporters and workers caught the inspiration of the new opportunity. Saint Paul's remained, and served the people.
Not only were the excellent facilities of the church's parish house devoted to the social center needs of the people of the district, but their attention was attracted in a conspicuous way by the opening of a neighborhood house around the corner, in the heart of the foreign section on Wooster Street. There were amusement and instructional opportunities which appealed to the residents of the neighborhood. There they had a place to gather, to read, to play games, to indulge in athletic sports. Boys' elnhs and girls' elubs, men's and women's organizations, were formed for them. To them religion was made a natural, an appealing thing of life. And the people of Saint Paul's led the way in minister- ing to their needs of guidanee and instruction. Here in this neighborhood house, to make the service intensely practical, was opened one of the city's milk supply stations, where in the summer the poorest might get pure milk for the saving of the habies, and have friendly advice and help for the proper feeding of their children and the conduct of their households.
In a somewhat different way. Davenport Church at the corner of Wooster Square took np the same work. Its people abandoned it, in a sense, in 1909, hut they went to Center Church. That church took the Davenport building and carried on there a work that would have greatly surprised and enlightened him from whom the church was named. It was settlement work, with the definite church organization as a center. With an Italian pastor at first-New Haven still rejoices in the work which the Rev. Francesco Pesaturo did there-later with a pastor specially trained for work of this sort, Center Church has main- tained here a home, partly religious, partly non-sectarian. for the Italians of the city. Those of non-Catholic and Congregational beliefs join the church, and their children attend the Sunday school. Others, particularly the boys and
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young men of the neighborhood, are affiliated through non-sectarian boys' club or Boy Scout or other social center work. In this department of the service of Davenport settlement Allen B. Lincoln of Center Church was for years a leader of power and influence, and never will New Haven cease to benefit from the seeds of good citizenship, of sturdy manhood, of true brotherhood, of under- standing of the best that is in America, which he sowed in the good soil of the well disposed youthful minds which came under his influence.
Other churches have joined in a similar way in the needed work of teaching American ideals to the multitude from other lands who make up so great a part of the population of modern New Haven, notably the Church of the Redeemer in its Welcome Hall work on Oak Street. This church, by the way, has also vielded to the change caused by New Haven's expansion, and is about to establish itself in a new home at the corner of Whitney Avenne and Cold Spring Street. Its fine old edifice at Orange and Wall streets, where the Rev. Jonathan Todd and the Rev. Watson L. Phillips and others made it a power, has been disposed of to another church which was forced to yield to the changing character of the eity, Trinity German Lutheran Evangelieal Church, formerly at the lower end of George Street.
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