USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 26
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
"New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted with rows of grand old elm-trees; and the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and reputation. The various depart- ments of this Institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the middle of the town, where they are dimly visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral yard in England; and when their branches are in full leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter time, these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance; seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and country; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it; which is at once novel and pleasant." (Dickens' "American Notes".)
In 1850, Center Church had already been disfigured by what we of this generation must regard as an act of the grossest vandalism in having the beautiful fabric of its Flemish bond brickwork submerged in colored paint. At the same time the woodwork, which up to this time had been painted white as required by its classical architectural character, was painted of . a color to match the colored paint on the brickwork. I am told that there is no more striking example of the decline of taste in the United States during the forepart of the 19th century than that of the painting in 1845 of the brickwork of Center Church, which had been built only so recently as 1814. In other words, the same generation that in 1814 built one of
277
NEW HAVEN IN 1850
the most beautiful specimens of classical architecture to be found in the country, masked its beauty with colored paint in 1845.
Up to 1850 the United Church presented its original and beautiful appearance of a red brick structure with white wood- work. The pernicious example of Center Church now had its baneful effect; within the year the United Church also received its bath of colored paint.
In 1850, Trinity Church retained the original form in which it had been finished in 1815 from designs by Ithiel Town. It was still greatly admired, though perhaps it did not evoke the enthusiasm produced when it was first built and so highly praised by Timothy Dwight, the elder. N. P. Willis gave a chapter to Trinity Church in an elaborate work called "Amer- ican Scenery," published in London in 1839, for which he furnished the text and W. H. Bartlett the illustrations. Willis was indeed ready to assert that there was scarcely a House of Worship in Christendom to equal it. In the greatly altered form in which we see the church to-day, and shorn of its beautiful investiture of trees, it is difficult for us to understand why in the old days it should have made so great an impres- sion as it unquestionably did. It is to be remembered that buildings in the Gothic taste were comparatively rare in this country when it was built, that it was churchly, in good taste, and had a wonderful setting in its place under the elms on the Green. No architect of to-day would design a structure like Trinity Church as originally designed by Town, but undeniably the church had, in its original form, great charm.
In 1850, the western portion of the Green between the backs of the three churches and College Street was dominated by the State House designed and built by Ithiel Town to imitate, it was claimed, the Temple of Theseus at Athens. Though fine in proportions, this Doric structure was so cheaply built (in 1828) that it presented a much better appearance by moon- light than by daylight. Its position there on the Green pro- claimed the fact that New Haven was one of the twin capitals of the Commonwealth and the resort alternate Springs of
278
NEW HAVEN :
bucolic solons, who feasted at the Tontine Hotel without stint on the toothsome shad, which then ran in unnumbered thou- sands in the unpolluted waters of the Connecticut River.
On the North side of the Green in 1850, the white house of Chief Justice Daggett with its two wings (one at each end) was still standing. The old Chief Justice died in 1851. Then his house was sawn in two and drawn off to a site on Columbus Avenue, where in a greatly mutilated form it may be seen to-day. Mrs. Daggett was a daughter of Dr. Eneas Munson, at whose house in New Haven during his student days Nathan Hale was so often a welcome guest. The Trowbridge house was built in 1851-2 for Mr. Thomas Trowbridge from designs by Sidney Mason Stone. The Trowbridge family had long been in the West India trade and had learned the hospitable traditions of the planters. Here in his New Haven house Mr. Trowbridge entertained Sir Thomas Briggs, merchants from Trinidad, Martinique, Demerara and the Spanish Main. No house in New Haven is more identified with the Civil War than the Trowbridge house. It was one of the stations of the "Underground Railroad," a system for assisting the escape of slaves to Canada. In this house Mr. Trowbridge enter- tained Lincoln, President Hayes, James G. Blaine (the Plumed Knight), Minister Washburn and many other men prominent in public life; from its front porch all the Northern victories were celebrated. Already crowded on the one hand by the New Ives Memorial Library, on the site of the Bristol house, and on the other hand by the new New Haven County Court House, on the sites of the Smith and DeForest houses, the Trowbridge house is soon to come down, but its beautiful columns are to be again set up, it is said, as a front to the Ezekiel Trowbridge house on Temple Street, now being con- verted into a chapel for Center Church.
In 1850, the Judge William Bristol house, which we all remember, stood side by side with the Daggett house, which was built a few years earlier, and which it followed in design, in so far as it presented a balanced composition with a wing
279
NEW HAVEN IN 1850
at each end. Who has not stopped to examine the exquisite classical portico of the Bristol house and gazed with admira- tion on its charming old-time garden laid out in formal beds bordered with box? All this was swept away only the other day to make way for our new Ives Memorial Library. The Bristol house was built in 1800 by David Hoadley, the "self- taught architect," who in 1813 came here from Waterbury to build the United Church-his masterpiece.
The Daggett and Bristol houses were unique in design for this part of the country, though a house with wings at either end was the common design in the South. It is probable, however, that these houses were not copied from any Southern houses. It is more than likely that the design was obtained from one of the numerous books on architecture then used by New England builders.
In 1850 the Smith house, later known as the Edwards house, stood next on the east to the Daggett house. Of all New Haven houses this one, with its beautiful Renaissance front, has been, I think, the most admired. Lafayette reviewed the troops on the Green from the steps of this house on the occasion of his memorable visit in 1824. The DeForest house, later known as the Sargent house, stood next on the east side of the Smith house, the Smith and DeForest houses having also been built by David Hoadley.
These four houses, the Bristol, Daggett, Smith and DeForest houses, standing side by side, were dignified resi- dences, and if they were not pretentious enough to have the grand air, they were beyond all peradventure unusually ele- gant and refined specimens of architecture for this part of the world. For pure charm New Haven will never surpass them; for the outward expression of the inward grace of a still earlier day, they were adequate in substance and perfect in form, and we shall do well to treasure their recollection with whatever else we hold most precious.
Of the Ingersoll house on the corner of Elm and Temple Streets, I shall not attempt an account, since it hardly falls
280
NEW HAVEN :
within the purview of my title and since it merits a more extended notice than I could here give to it. I may merely say in passing that it was built about 1830 by Hon. Ralph I. Ingersoll, father of Governor Charles R. Ingersoll, and it pre- sented in 1850 much the same appearance that it does to-day. For wealth of association and for treasures, I venture to think no last century New Haven house surpassed it. The Inger- solls were always, as I judge, more identified with the social and political life of the city and state and the country at large than with Yale College. For over one hundred and sixty years an Ingersoll had a law office looking out on New Haven Green.
In 1850, the Tontine Hotel, built in 1824 by David Hoadley, probably from designs furnished by Ithiel Town, was the main building on the east side of the Green. The City Hall with its vague architectural ancestry had not yet been built; its place was occupied by the old County Jail, chiefly memor- able, perhaps, as the abiding place for many months of the captives of the Amistad, whose defense by the Hon. Roger S. Baldwin, father of Governor Simeon E. Baldwin, is perhaps the most notable page in the legal annals of Connecticut. Their story has been told, and well told, by Governor Baldwin in his paper entitled, "The Captives of Amistad." After these blacks were brought here in 1839, forty-four of them, male and female, were crowded into four rooms in the County Jail, where they received so many visitors that they had little time for ennui. Governor Baldwin says of them :- "On pleasant days the captives were taken out on the Green for exercise, and performed many wild feats of agility to the delight of crowds of spectators." Life was not as strenuous in New Haven in 1839 as it is to-day, and naturally the gambols on the Green of these great black men from the west coast "drew like a circus." The negroes were provided with pantaloon, very appropriately as it would seem, since they were abducted in a barracoon. The "girls were given shawls which they at once wound up into turbans for their heads." What a
281
NEW HAVEN IN 1850
picture this scene would make :- in the foreground the open Green already adorned with splendid elms; in the background the three churches in a row, Trinity with its low tower sur- mounted by a delicate openwork parapet, and the Center and North Churches with as yet unpainted brickwork; and in the middle distance, the huge black captives performing their "many wild feats of agility" before a crowd of citizens-ladies and gentlemen-in the early Victorian costumes, which seem so grotesque to us of to-day.
In 1850, the Chapel Street side of the Green between Church and Temple Streets was occupied by stores and by the Park House-a hostelry famous for cuisine and home-like hospi- tality. Here two years later in an old dwelling, a stripling by the name of Edward O'Malley began to "keep store," with what success there is in this generation ample evidence. On the upper corner of Chapel and Temple Streets on the site of the "Boston Store," stood the home of Augustus R. Street, Esq., whose daughter married Commodore, afterward Rear- Admiral Andrew Hull Foote. Above the Street house on the rise of the hill, were the stately façades of the Shipman, the Ebenezer Johnson and the Darling houses. The old New Haven House was in process of erection on the corner of Chapel and College Streets, from designs by Henry Austin. The hotel was opened in 1851 with great éclat. A highly laudatory account of the structure and its palatial appoint- ments appeared in the New Haven Palladium, and since I have so recently printed another account, I will not enter upon the subject here.
College Street, along the west side of the Green, was adorned in 1850 with elms, not indeed, competing with those on Temple Street, but still fine enough to be notable anywhere but in New Haven. Nearly up to this time the Green had been used as a public playground, particularly by the College students, who by some ancient prescription were allowed to have their games of wicket, football, and two-old-cat on the very Green itself, chiefly using for this purpose the space in front of the old State House. The use of the Green as a playground for
282
NEW HAVEN :
College students goes back to an early day, probably to the removal of the College from Saybrook to New Haven in 1716. The space in the rear of Center Church is the traditional scene of Nathan Hale's astonishing feats of broad jumping. In the Dean's office in "Connecticut Hall" hangs an old print of the College, engraved by Amos Doolittle, published in 1807. This shows a group of students playing football on the upper portion of the Green "just over the fence" from College Street. When this ancient prescription of the students was first chal- lenged I cannot say. In his Chronicles, Mr. Blake says :
"In 1848, when the Methodist Church was removed from the Green, a vote was passed in city meeting that that part of the Green 'should never be occupied by the students of any institution or any other individuals as a play-ground.' In the same year the Common Council appointed a committee to confer with the college authorities for the suppression of football playing on the Green altogether, but the faculty objected so strenuously that the movement was not pursued. Ten years later, however, the blow could no longer be averted, and in February, 1858, a city by-law was passed which forbade not only the playing of football but of all other athletic games in the streets and squares of the city. By this ordinance the record of the Green as a public playground for the practice of games or sports was brought to a final and abrupt con- clusion."
I have it, however, on the authority of Governor Baldwin that the old game of wicket was played by the students on the southwest corner of the Green from 1857 to about 1860. A student then, he was one of the players. The police finally stopped the game. There was a tradition among the students that they had a prescriptive right as students to play on the Green, and young Baldwin was deputed to consult his father, Senator Baldwin, on the point. The elder Baldwin decided against the students. It is probable that this incident, in which our own Governor figured as a wicketer, took place in the spring or summer of 1858.
In 1850, back from College Street, stood the famous "Old
283
NEW HAVEN IN 1850
Brick Row," of which only "Connecticut Hall" (long known as "South Middle") remains. This famous row of brick buildings once constituted about all there was of Yale College, and around them were clustered the most cherished memories of Yale men down to, say, twenty-five years ago. What recol- lections, indeed, their very names call up-South College, Atheneum, South Middle, Lyceum, North Middle, Old Chapel (1824), North College (1821). Beyond North College in line with the "Old Brick Row," stood the old Divinity School building (1835). In front of the space between North Col- lege and the Divinity School building stood the President's house, built for Timothy Dwight, the elder, and afterwards occupied by President Day. They were, as I judge, rather below the average of similar buildings of the time. The Chapel, built in 1824, had attached to the base of its tower a beautiful portico, torn down some years before the building itself, and apparently never greatly valued or admired in pro- portion to its merits, if the photographs of it, which have come down to us, do not greatly exalt it, which is not impossible. Nevertheless, these buildings had the supreme merit of being just right in pitch-they exactly suited their purpose and the genius of the place. Their correctness of pitch, their nice adjustment to the situation, their felicity of expression, their relation to the common life of the day but lifted just above it, all combined to give them a charm and a sense of belonging to the scene such as none of their successors has had.
The New Haven of 1850 had the character of an overgrown village occupied by a home-bred, home-loving, homogeneous people, and was greatly admired by all visitors for what Willis had a few years earlier described as its "simple and pure society," and its "air of refinement and repose." But the greatest asset that New Haven ever had was its noble elms and particularly the great "elm-gallery" on the Green. The "City of Elms" was known the world over.
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
XXIV.
NEW HAVEN RAILWAY STATIONS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.
(Reprinted from the Morning Journal-Courier of February 11, 1911.)
In an article published last June to claim for Henry Austin, "Father of New Haven Architects," the credit of designing the old College Library, the design for which had been attrib- uted, in an article published by Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, to Alexander Jackson Davis, I referred to the old Chapel Street railroad station as having been one of Austin's designs. At that time I found a full page water-color drawing of the station design in one of the two volumes of Austin's designs preserved in the College Library. This water-color drawing is dated 1848, and was made, as I can have no doubt, by Henry Flockton, an Englishman, who was employed in the "forties" in Austin's office, and who, according to an almost unvarying tradition, contributed largely to Austin's design for the old College Library. In my researches I did not, however, hit upon any contemporary description of the old "depot," as the building was generally called. I am, therefore, greatly pleased to find in Bassett's "New Haven Almanac for the Year 1911," an admirable cut, by Irving Hurlburt, of the old railroad station, together with a brief description of the structure from the leading article in Benham's "New Haven Directory and Annual Advertiser," for 1849-50, a small but very creditable compilation of its kind.
The appearance and history of the old Chapel Street railroad station is particularly interesting to us just now, when we are looking forward to the great structure soon to be begun from designs by Mr. Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Ives Memo- rial Public Library. New Haven sixty years ago was as proud of its railroad station, erected at an expense of $40,000, as New Haven three or four years hence will be proud of its new
285
NEW HAVEN RAILWAY STATIONS
railway station, which, it is reported, will by itself cost about a million dollars, to which three or four millions may be added for further improvements of all sorts in other equipment of the road at New Haven.
Mr. Bassett kindly loaned me. the little old volume referred to, and from it I have transcribed the entire account contained in it of the old Chapel Street Station, which was finished in 1849. The directory contains a woodcut of the old station, by Lockwood Sanford, whose place of business was in Mitchell's building on Chapel Street, which Austin also designed. Hurlburt used Sanford's woodcut in making his plate for Bassett's almanac; but for the illustration of this article, I have had Flockton's original water-color drawing photographed for reproduction by the usual half-tone method. The directory account, which here follows, seems to have been written by the "advance agent of prosperity," of that time, and would do any modern newspaper reporter credit:
"This beautiful edifice, an engraved representation of which will be found on another page, is situated in Union Street and occupies the entire square from Chapel to Cherry Street,- being 300 feet in length. The style of architecture is Italian. The front of the building is toward the East, with a Tower at either end, each 25 feet square,-the one at the South end being 82 feet in height, while that at the North rises to an altitude of 140 feet above the pavement in Chapel Street, and 156 feet above the track of the railroad. In this latter Tower are the Engineer's room, and the office of the Company, as also other convenient and useful apartments. The main or center edifice is a parallelogram, 100 feet in depth, with a floor or platform 76 by 82 feet, suspended from the roof by numer- ous strong iron rods. This portion of the building is united to the North and South Towers, by connecting Wings 52 feet in width.
"The grand entrance for passengers is from Union Street, by a spacious doorway into the center building. On either side of the main hall or platform are extensive Parlors,-that
286
NEW HAVEN :
on the left being for the accommodation of ladies, and is furnished with a profusion of rich and costly sofas, divans, chairs, ottomans, mirrors, etc., with convenient dressing rooms attached. Obliging servants are always in attendance. The Parlor on the right is for gentlemen's use, and is to be fur- nished as a Reading Room.
"The railroad track, which is 16 feet below the floor of the building, is reached by easy flights of stairs on the right and left of the principal entrance, inside the building. The descent to the track of the New Haven and Northampton (or the Canal) railroad, is from the West side of the platform, directly opposite the main entrance. The Ticket Office is on the left side of the grand hall, with ornamental windows of ground glass, one of which opens into the Ladies' Parlor.
"Beside the Parlors, there are, in the connecting Wings and South Tower, several large and commodious rooms, to be occupied for various purposes connected with the business of the company.
"The height of the building, from the pavement in Union Street to the eaves, is 21 feet, with a spacious square dome in the center, rising to the height of 64 feet above the floor.
"In the North Tower, at an elevation of 90 feet above the street, is a clock, with glazed faces 8 feet in diameter, looking toward the four cardinal points. This clock is to be illumin- ated with gas, so that the hour of the night may be distinctly seen from all directions. Twenty feet above the clock, a large bell is suspended, the ringing of which indicates the arrival and departure of the trains of cars on the New York and New Haven, as well as the New Haven and Northampton, and the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield Railroads, all of which radiate from this central point. A watchman being stationed in the building at night, this bell is usually the first to sound its note of alarm in cases of fire.
"From the belfry of this lofty tower, lifted 140 feet above the neighboring streets, a most extensive and picturesque view of the city and surrounding country may be had. The spec-
287
NEW HAVEN RAILWAY STATIONS
tator looks down on a forest of luxuriant elms, maples, etc., intermingled with which are the stately mansions, beautiful cottages, towering spires, and tasteful gardens of our sylvan city.
"The design of this beautiful structure, which reflects the highest credit on the architect, the builders, the Company, and the City, was furnished by Henry Austin, Esq., and the build- ing was erected by Messrs. Bishop and Miller. Its cost to the Railroad Company was upwards of $40,000. Long may it stand, as an enduring monument to the taste, the liberality and the enterprise of its projectors."
I call particular attention in the directory account of the building, to the "extensive Parlors" (with a capital P), the Parlor to the right being "for gentlemen's use" and "to be furnished as a Reading Room," and that to the left "being for the accommodation of ladies and is furnished with a profusion of rich and costly sofas, divans, chairs, ottomans, mirrors, etc., with convenient dressing rooms attached. Obliging servants are always in attendance." The gallantry of the officials of the railroad in providing all those "rich and costly" oriental appointments for the ladies (Place aux dames) before they got around to furnishing the Parlor for "gentlemen's use" as a "reading room" should not be overlooked. And those "oblig- ing servants!" Were they "always in attendance," and did they really serve the public, or stand red-hatted in readiness to receive a consideration expressed in silver? The whole thing reads like an oriental romance-like a chapter torn out of "Vathek."
When I came upon the water-color drawing in the old volume of Austin's designs in the College Library, I concluded that the design could not be put down to any school of archi- tecture, but must be characterized as eclectic, and decidedly eclectic at that. The writer of the article in the old directory seems, however, to have had no hesitation in calling the design Italian. I think that it would be hard to find in Italy its pro- totype, though I daresay the design comes nearer to being
288
NEW HAVEN :
Italian than anything else. The point is of no consequence. Italian or Dravidian-it was all the same to our citizens of that day. The colonial tradition had by 1849 completely expired, and architecture both in America and in Europe was approach- ing its lowest ebb.
Referring to the structure itself, the suspension of the floor or platform from the roof "by numerous strong iron rods," was a marked feature of the building, and one that gave some cause for alarm, since it was thought by many that the roof trusses were not strong enough to sustain the load. Mr. Theodore Weston, of the famous Yale class of '53, tells me that, when he was an upper classman, the structure, then relatively new, was studied as a problem in engineering by him, and some of his fellow students, who looked forward to careers as civil engineers. He well recalls a reconnaissance of the building with Tutor Backus. This was before the Shef- field Scientific School had been opened, though Mr. Sheffield's gift had been announced and preparations had been begun for opening the school, when the Sheffield Mansion on Hillhouse Avenue should be vacated. Mr. Sheffield had only a few years before (in 1844) bought the man- sion, which had been built about 1832 by Ithiel Town, and had remodeled it in much its present external form. Mr. Weston thinks that an examination of the college publications of the time, the "Lit," the "Tomahawk," or the "Banner," would bring to light articles on the old station from the stand- point of the college students. But that investigation must be left to other hands.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.