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 27
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It would be interesting to know where Austin got the idea of suspending the floor or platform of the structure by iron rods from a trussed roof. While that was not altogether new in American practice, it was far from common, and so marked a novelty as to be the subject of much speculation and discus- sion. It is to Austin's credit that his courage and resources were equal to the trial of such a new thing in building as this suspension principle, especially as he was neither a trained engineer nor a trained architect.
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Mr. Weston, after a long and distinguished career as a civil engineer, looks back upon New Haven as he knew it in the "fifties," with lively interest, and could supply many items about the old town, if he would.
It is commonly said that for many years past, New Haven, and, indeed, the Commonwealth of Connecticut, has been owned "body and soul" by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. Be that as it may, and I do not pretend to know about it, it is clear that in the beginning, the attitude of the road was one of gratitude for favors received, and of a desire to reciprocate them. The concessive language employed by the board of directors of the road in those old days, is worthy of note. I quote from Mr. George Dutton Watrous' article on "Travel and Transportation" in Atwater's History of the City of New Haven, p. 369:
"It will be remembered that one of the three leases conveyed lands south of Chapel Street, to be used for the purpose of building a station house. Upon these was erected what is now known as the Old Depot, which was used as a passenger station by the principal roads of the city, until the building of the new depot at the foot of Meadow Street in 1874. Admirers of that artistic structure may be interested in the allusion to it made in the report of the board of directors in 1849.
"The liberal treatment and high consideration extended to this company by the government and intelligent citizens of New Haven, have induced the only departure from a strict rule of economy in the construction of the road, which had been adopted by the directors, and have led to the erection of a station-house, from a design of a popular architect of the city, of more ornament and elegance than would otherwise have been built.
"The clock was presented by an owner of one of the adjoin- ing buildings.
"There were further delays, which prevented the completion of the station until the winter of 1849."
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How great the changes in the city have been since the old station was built in '49 may be gathered from the description in the old directory, of the view of the city from the main tower :
"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 specta- tor 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."
Those were "happy days." New Haven was not much more than an overgrown village, the elms were at or nearing the very height of their glory, the automobile and the flat- wheeled trolley car were not as yet, work was a-plenty, living was cheap, trusts were unheard of, germs and flies were not the bugbears they now are. New Haven was still a capitol city, and the resort of bucolic solons who, with each recurring spring, filled our classic State House, and feasted at the Ton- tine Hotel without stint on the toothsome shad, which then ran in unnumbered thousands in the unpolluted waters of the Connecticut River. We shudder at the "walnut and rep" and the silver-plated ice pitcher of those simple days, but the telephone, the phonograph, the wireless telegraph, the automo- bile, the aeroplane, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Carnegie, ragtime music, and Mr. Gifford Pinchot, with his great principle of the conservation of our natural resources, have not brought complete happiness to mankind after all, unless we except Mr. Roosevelt, who, with all his inhuman activity, not long ago announced from the portals of the White House that he had had a "perfectly corking time."
One does not have to be the "oldest inhabitant" to remember when the old station was in use. Below stairs, at the level of the tracks, it was a cavernous place, dark, confused and filled with smoke. I remember very well the effect made upon my youthful imagination when, in that murky atmosphere, I
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encountered a large sign, "Beware of pick-pockets." It seemed to me that ruffians were ready at any moment to spring upon me out of the smoke. The few surviving Yale graduates of those early days may recall being met in that cavernous place on their arrival in New Haven by the advance agents of the Sophomore Societies, now passed into limbo with the station itself. That sulphurous underground hole was the true birthplace of the time-honored and protean story, which has had so many habitats and so many costumes since. The version I offer has at least all the hallmarks of veracity.
A little boy journeying to New Haven with his father, got off the train and found himself engulfed in the clamour and smoke and stygian darkness of the old New Haven "Depot." Now this little boy, as I should here remark, had been carefully reared in the belief that hell was a place of fire and brimstone; such were the advantages of "Christian Nurture" under the Calvanistic scheme of salvation. He clung to the parental hand. "Father, is this hell?" said he. "No, my son," was the reply, "this is New Haven."
No wonder that the passengers, confused and half strangled in those lower regions, fell easy victims to the shrieking hack- men who stood at the top of the steps leading out of the infer- nal regions, and whose chorus of yells was as characteristic of the place as the dirt, confusion, noise and smoke.
A New Haven lady of the old noblesse recalls the "fearful joy" she knew as a child in peering into a glass showcase in the ladies' parlor of the old station, and examining the pathetic fruits of the labors of the children of the New Haven Orphan Asylum. Embalmed, as it were, in that glass sarcophagus were worsted caps and mittens and strange dolls, pincushions, needle-cases, housewives, flatiron holders and sontags, all offered for sale to a compassionate traveling public. This appeal for the orphans was not in vain, though the little souvenirs de la ville seemed always the same-seemed always to have been handed down from a day long past, wearing the pallid look of handiwork from which all value has perished
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save that of sentiment. The Afrite woman who purveyed this merchandise was not less dégagée than her wares. The show case kept its place year after year, and finally when the old station was abandoned, the orphans followed the Road to the new station, where, until within a very few years, a glass case with the same artless products of orphan industry, stood on a large flat-topped radiator in the ladies' end of its wind- swept and dirty waiting room. Some of the articles enumer- ated sound too adult for orphan manufacture and doubtless were not, but "sweet charity" covers a multitude of sins, and it were heartless indeed to censure the sale of a few trifles made by other than orphan hands, so long as the orphans got the benefit of the transaction. And who can tell what a son- tag is, or was? Did Henrietta invent the sontag and give it vogue? There is a vague tradition still lingering in a certain part of the city that a sontag was a sort of chest protector. This seems plausible, since Henrietta Sontag was a singer. But these are idle speculations in a busy world. The orphans are still with us, and every Sabbath day file into and out of the north gallery of the United Church; but whether or not they still practice their pretty arts the writer is not informed.
Upon the completion of the present railway station, in 1874, the old building was converted into a public market and so used until 1894, when it was destroyed by the most spectacular fire, as some say, that New Haven has ever witnessed. Many will recall the burning of the Chapel Street tower, the wooden superstructure of which fell with a great crash at the feet of an immense throng of spectators.
John B. Judson, the fruiterer, claims to have made the first and the last sale that was ever made in the old city market. The fire began in his store and he has given me the following account of it :
"It had been a quiet 'Fourth,' and I was sitting in the after- noon in front of my store when Chief Kennedy, of the fire department (they called him 'King Kennedy'), drove by with his old grey horse. I called out to him and said, 'Chief, this
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has been a quiet day for you,' and he called back, 'Yes, but the "Fourth" isn't over yet.' That evening at about half past eleven, a boy standing on the old Chapel Street bridge, touched off a rocket which had been given him by a dealer in fireworks. This rocket was one of those rockets which are provided with a tripod, of which one leg was broken, so that when the boy touched it off, the rocket, instead of going up, tilted over and drove directly through my front store window into a lot of fireworks I had displayed there. A general explosion fol- lowed, and that is how the fire began. The timbers of the building were dry, many of them were loaded with grease, and the fire swept through the market so rapidly and was so hot that the department had great difficulty in controlling it and preventing it from spreading to the adjacent buildings. Chief Kennedy told me afterwards that he regarded it as the most difficult fire to handle that New Haven had experienced in his time."
From the fire the two towers, stripped of all incongruous woodwork, emerged as ruins of real dignity-as masses of fine brick masonry, standing above the entrance to regions truly infernal. The two ruined towers long remained as striking and interesting features of that portion of the city and readily rise before the imagination. Mr. Judson has in his present store two photographs taken the day after the fire, showing the great mass of the brickwork of the main tower with but a few shreds of wood still clinging to the top of it.
The present station at the foot of Meadow Street was built in 1874, from designs of Mr. C. J. Danforth, who was not an architect, but who was then employed as a draftsman in the offices of the engineer of the road. The French mansard was then in full vogue and furnished the motive for this design, which had little enough to commend it, even before the building was partially destroyed by fire, which left us the shabby and deformed structure by which we are now so widely known.
Mr. Gilbert's design, with which the public are now familiar, is for a monumental structure of cut granite in the classical
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style, and it is hoped that the fabric will be worthy of his great reputation.
But the new structure will fail to serve, as it should, as a splendid vestibule for the city, unless our citizens provide for it a broad approach leading from it to the spacious, historic Green. We have already made a fine beginning, in the group- ing of our public and semi-public buildings around the Green, and we are at work enlarging our park areas and acquiring playground sites. When we seriously take up the creation of an adequate approach between the railway station and the Green, we shall indeed begin to reap the benefits of the civic improvement movement, which our citizens to-day are so warmly supporting.
And now, at last, I return to my little book-the New Haven Directory of 1849-50-to renew my acknowledgments to it. In the preface, I read this notice :
"It is the intention of the publisher to embellish his work from year to year, with one or more of the most prominent public edifices in the city.
"The accomplishment of this design will be attended with considerable expense; yet he trusts that the spirit which induced the outlay will be appreciated by his fellow citizens, and secure a more extended sale of the work. The first of the series is the New York and New Haven R. R. Station House (see description page 7), which will be recognized as a correct likeness of the building. The public are indebted to Mr. Lockwood Sanford, of this city, the delineator, for the correctness of the view of this magnificent structure; so creditable to the company under whose direction it was built."
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
New Haven, Conn., Feb. 10, 19II.
XXV.
"ALLERTON AVENUE" SUGGESTED AS THE NAME FOR THE ORANGE STREET APPROACH TO THE RAILWAY STATION.
(Reprinted from the Journal-Courier of August 23d, 1920.)
HON. DAVID E. FITZGERALD,
City Hall, New Haven, Conn.
My Dear Mayor FitzGerald :
In order to bring the matter before you and the honorable Board of Aldermen with due formality, I write to suggest that the new station approach be named "Allerton Avenue," in honor of Isaac Allerton, who landed on Plymouth Rock three hundred years ago this year. Allerton was the only passen- ger on the Mayflower who ever lived in New Haven. He was one of the chief figures in the Mayflower band. His name was the fifth name subscribed November II, 1620, to the May- flower compact, on which it appears between the names of Elder William Brewster and Captain Standish. Allerton was, perhaps, the most active of all of the New England colonists of his time in commercial undertakings, and was long ago given the name of "The Father of New England Commerce." He was a man of great energy and imagination; a man of restless spirit. He came to New Haven in 1646 and died here in 1659, when he was buried on the Green. The exact spot of his grave is not known, but his burial place is supposed to be between Center Church and the flag staff. In the article on "Com- merce," contributed by Thomas R. Trowbridge, Jr., in Atwater's History of the City of New Haven, he says in part of Allerton :
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"He built by the creek his famous 'House of the Four Por- ticos.' It stood at the junction of Fair and Union streets. His warehouse was opposite his residence and stood as ware- houses generally did at that time, on the brink of the creek over the bed of which now run the trains of the Consolidated road. It was accessible by such small vessels as were used at that time and long afterwards, comprised in the sea-going fleet of New Haven. He sent his vessels from this port to Massachusetts Bay, Virginia, Delaware Bay and, after, to 'The Barbadoes.' "
Allerton, as long as he lived here, was the foremost man in the commercial life of the place, and might well be adopted by our Chamber of Commerce as its Patron Saint. He has no memorial of any description in New Haven, and the new sta- tion approach affords an opportunity to honor his name. By so doing, New Haven would do its bit in commemorating the Landing of the Pilgrims, an anniversary being generally cele- brated throughout New England.
On the practical side of the question, Allerton Avenue is easy to speak, not readily confounded with names of other streets, and looks exceedingly well in print. For the foregoing reasons I strongly urge upon you and the Board of Aldermen the naming of the new station approach Allerton Avenue.
I may add that I have long been in correspondence with an antiquarian and historian, who is writing a comprehensive "Life" of Allerton for which he has collected the material. He had hoped to publish his book this year, but the time has been unfavorable for its publication : I mention this merely to give some further idea of Allerton's stature among the early New England worthies.
Yours very truly, GEO. DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
New Haven, Aug. 21.
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"ALLERTON AVENUE"
NOTE: City Hall took no steps toward securing the land required for the approach from the railway station to the Green, proposed in my "Open Letter" of 1907 and defined by Messrs. Gilbert and Olmsted in their "Report" of 1910. But meanwhile land values increased so rapidly in the region indicated as to make the cost to the city prohibitive. It will not be disputed by any one intimately acquainted with the facts, that the delay of the city to provide suitable access to the proposed new railway station, delayed action by the Railroad Company, and is in part responsible for the unsatisfactory character of the new station.
Finally, under Acting-Mayor Campner, the Orange Street approach was laid out by the then city engineer, Mr. Frederick L. Ford, approved by the Commission on the City Plan, and the land acquired. While this approach will not be in any way as convenient or as dignified as the approach first contemplated, it will in a measure serve the purpose, though never take the place of an approach opening into the Green through Temple Street, or joining College Street.
XXVI
THE PASSING OF TWO FAMOUS HOTELS.
(Reprinted from the New Haven Palladium of Jan. 30, 1911.)
To the Editor of The Palladium.
Sir :- In looking over Benham's "New Haven Directory and Annual Advertiser" for the years 1851-2 (No. 12 in the series of New Haven Directories), I have stumbled upon an account of the New Haven House then just opened, and but yesterday leveled to the ground. As this account of what has now become an historical memory was first published in the "Daily Palladium" of sixty years ago, it may interest your. readers of to-day. If any New Haven paper of to-day has upon its staff a reporter who can do better, or as well, by any modern public enterprise, let him try his hand on the new hotel when it is done; and let us hope that when the time comes to write up the new building, it will bear the traditional name "The New Haven House," and not be called the "Hotel Taft." We surely have better ways of showing our patriotism than by calling our new hotel after our President, who, modest gentleman that he is, would undoubtedly prefer that the old name should be retained for the new structure.
It is pleasant to be told of the old New Haven House that "Even the garret chambers, are good enough for a prince. All the lodging rooms are carpeted, and the parlor chambers, with fine Brussels, besides being furnished with sofas, divans, etc. The bedsteads are generally of the cottage style and of black walnut graining." Those were happy days when princely luxury was predicated upon ingrain carpets and bedsteads of the "cottage style and of black walnut graining." Princes who come to our shores in these days are content with nothing less than the "golden fleece." I do not know that the old New Haven House ever had a prince under its roof, but the distin- guished visitors, American and foreign, whose names were entered upon its old registers would form an interesting list.
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Not long ago in conversation in New York with Mr. Heath, who was for several years clerk of the New Haven House, and who is now one of the managers of the Hotel Belmont, he told me that when he went to work in the New Haven House he was taken upstairs and shown what he described as a "roomful of old registers" which had been preserved from the opening of the house; but these old volumes, even before he left the New Haven House, were gathered together and taken down stairs and burned. This reminded me that when the Graduates' Club moved into its Chapel Street home some eighteen years ago, I found under the eaves in the garret, some of the earliest registers of the Tontine Hotel. How they came there I have no idea. I reported my discovery to the late Governor Charles R. Ingersoll, who was greatly interested in antiquarian matters. He said that if I examined the old books I would find in them the autographs of some of the most distin- guished men who ever came to New Haven-many men prom- inent in public affairs in the old days. The books were pre- served, and are still in the possession of the Graduates' Club, having been moved from the garret of the old house, No. 954 Chapel Street, to the garret of the present quarters of the Club, No. 77 Elm Street. The old Tontine registers have particular interest just at this time, when the demolition of the Tontine Hotel seems so imminent. They bid fair to be soon the only surviving memorials of the place. I venture to suggest that it would be a graceful thing for the President and Governors of the Graduates' Club to vote to have the shattered bindings of the books put in order, and then to present the books to the New Haven Colony Historical Society for preservation in its library.
In conversation about New Haven the other day with Mr. Loyal Farragut, he said that in 1859 (I think that was the date mentioned), his father, Commodore Farragut, being at sea, he was brought to New Haven by his mother in order that he might have the benefit of instruction by a Yale tutor. They spent some weeks at the Tontine Hotel, and he remem-
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bered that the main parlor of the hotel impressed his boyish fancy as being a room of exceptional grandeur. He remem- bered, too, the visit to the Tontine of Cobden, the great English reformer, who spent a few days in the house.
But I will not compete, being only an "interloper" here, with "town-born" writers far better qualified than I am to write of the New Haven House as it was years ago; and so without further comment I will append the extract referred to at the beginning of this letter, from the old City Directory for 1851-2.
"This elegant and commodious Hotel, recently erected by Augustus R. Street, Esq., is now open for the reception of visitors under the proprietorship of George D. Ives, Esq. It has a commanding site, being built on elevated ground, on the corner of Chapel and College Streets, fronting the State House and Public Square, and near the Colleges. The follow- ing description we copy from the Daily Palladium:
"Its exterior is in graceful proportions-with just ornament enough to give the whole pile an air of cheerfulness and beauty, without any approach to gaudiness. The interior is all in harmony with the general view from without. The hall is paved with light colored marble in diamond shaped blocks. On the left is the gentlemen's reception room, handsomely furnished and upholstered; ascending two heavy marble steps and passing the porter's room, you approach the office desk, surrounded by a black walnut counter. From this spot, by bells and speaking tubes, the clerk may call or converse with any of the waiters or chamber maids, upon either of the five floors above. Immediately adjoining the office is a spacious dining room 56 by 40 feet in dimension, where more than two hundred persons may be seated at the table. At the foot of the hall are pantries, and a spaceway, with rear stairs for servants and others. Both the front and rear stairs ascend to the upper stories, so as to be convenient for all the inmates of the house, while they afford great protection to all in the event of a fire.
"There are from 125 to 130 rooms in the house, which is seven stories high, including the attic and basement. Even the attic chambers are good enough for a prince. All the lodging rooms are carpeted, and the parlor chambers, with fine Brussels, besides being furnished with sofas, divans, etc. The bedsteads are generally of the cottage style and of black walnut graining.
"On the second floor is a reception room for gentlemen and ladies, a little more elegant than that below, which is designed for gentlemen exclusively, and opposite is the ladies' parlor, of course the finest and most spacious parlor in the house.
"The views from nearly all the rooms are exceedingly pleasant; in the
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THE PASSING OF TWO FAMOUS HOTELS
rear is a fine prospect, generally of well cultivated gardens, and from the upper stories, the harbor is seen, with the surrounding scenery. From the front rooms is an open view of the Public Square, with the Churches and State House upon it, the shade trees and the other attractions of this beautiful spot.
"On the top of the Hotel is a spacious observatory, protected from the cold and wet by glass, which may be removed if desired; and here you are as on the pinnacle of a temple, where the whole city, girded about with mountains, and laved on its southern shores by the blue waters of the Sound, may be grouped almost into one view more pleasing than pencil could paint."
I hope Mr. Butterworth and his associates in their praise- worthy enterprise, realize how heavy is the responsibility placed upon them of maintaining the traditions of the old New Haven House for comfort and hospitality. Like every- thing else it grew old, to be sure, but it seems to have been at the start as much of an addition to New Haven of that day, as the new hotel will be to the New Haven of to-morrow.
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
XXVII.
THE THOMAS TROWBRIDGE MANSION, 1852-1912 SIDNEY MASON STONE, ARCHT .; UNDER- GROUND RAILROAD STATION FOR FUGITIVE SLAVES; LINCOLN AND BLAINE ITS GUESTS; FATE OF THE CORINTHIAN COLUMNS OF ITS FACADE.
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