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 4
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The new library must first of all provide for the convenient and safe storage and use of books; but it will fail if it does not strike the right architectural note. This places a grave responsibility upon the Building Committee, and they are working faithfully to discharge that responsibility. This committee consists of Mr. George D. Watrous, chairman ; his honor, Mayor Studley ; Professor John F. Weir, director of the Yale School of Fine Arts; Mr. Burton Mansfield, Mr. Samuel R. Avis of the public library directorate, and the writer.
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NEW HAVEN :
The New Hall of Records
The vaults in our City Hall,22 in which our public records are kept, are already inadequate. They are small, badly lighted, badly ventilated, inconvenient, and inadequately pro- tected against fire. The state law requires us to better protect our records. Something must be done, and that soon, not alone for self-respect, but for compliance with the law and to ensure the safety of our records.
Our Mayor, keenly alive to the situation, had the problem studied and a plan was reported for building, at a cost of $70,000, a hall of records, to be located between the Leffing- well building and the Police Court building.23 But this plan did not meet the reasonable requirements and was abandoned.
There is no available site on the City Hall plot for a hall of records. The Leffingwell site might be secured, but, even if the cost were not prohibitory, the site is far from ideal and has not been seriously entertained. A makeshift enlarge- ment of the present vaults has been decided upon. But the problem remains unsolved. In a few years the city will be again confronted with it; and meanwhile our priceless records will not be adequately protected against fire.
22 "Erected A. D. 1861 Harmanus M. Welch, Mayor."-(Tab- let.) Designed by the late David Russell Brown, then in the employ of Henry Austin, the architect. Mr. Brown had no training as a designer, nor had he any knowledge of architecture beyond what he had "picked up" in Austin's office. A few months before his death he told the writer that he got the idea of the design for the City Hall from a picture in an English illustrated magazine to which Mr. Austin was a subscriber, but he had no recollection what building illustrated in the magazine had given him the idea. His original design has now been placed in the collection of the New Haven Colony Historical Society by his business partner, Mr. Ferdinand Von Beren. He was born in New Haven May 30, 1831, and died here February 21, 1910. If the prototype of the City Hall cannot be identified it is easily classified as early Victorian Gothic with some Italian and French details. The massive tower gives the building a certain dignity, though described as a "fire trap." As a time keeper, the clock has been a conspicuous failure. Despite its vague architectural ancestry, the building has locally been greatly admired.
23 Built 1873; Rufus Gustavus Russell, architect; he was born Sept. 5, 1823, in that portion of Waterbury now known as Prospect.
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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
I venture to suggest that, when the remainder of the Trow- bridge site becomes available, i. e., the portion not used for the new public library, it might be used for a hall of records. There the building could have a free space all about it for light and air, and above all for isolation as a means of protection from fire.
New Haven should embrace her opportunity to give her records the protection accorded by other cities to their records.
New County Court House
I dare say that a small percentage of the citizens of New Haven realize that the county of New Haven has its Court House, its official residence, here in the city of New Haven. Certainly there is nothing to tell a visitor to our city that it is the county seat.
The present County Court House,24 attached to the City Hall and located back of the so-called Law Chambers25 build- ing, is badly lighted, badly ventilated, and far too small for the business of the county.
The New Haven county meeting, composed of the senators and representatives from the county to the State Legislature, have appointed a committee of five, of which the Hon. Alton Farrel is chairman, to consider better court house facilities for New Haven and Waterbury.
The New Haven County Bar Association has also appointed a committee to consider the matter, consisting of Messrs. John K. Beach, chairman; Harry G. Day, Henry C. White, Isaac Wolfe and James H. Webb.
A plan to tear down the Law Chambers building, which is owned by the county, and by a sort of patchwork to extend the present Court House to the street in the Victorian Gothic
24 "Erected A. D. 1872 Committee of the Bar: Alfred Black- man. John S. Beach. Dexter R. Wright. Arthur D. Osborne. Luzon B. Morris : Architect-David R. Brown." (Tablet.)
25 The Dexter house; said to have been designed by David Hoadley.
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style of the City Hall at an expense of from $175,000 to $200,000, has been rejected, and wisely. Our City Hall was greatly admired when built, but fortunately, as I think, no one is working in its style to-day. Victorian Gothic is a thing of the past. Even if the present Court House were enlarged by extending it to the street, it would be inconvenient in arrangement and could not be contrived so as to give the space and light and air required.
It is agreed on all hands, as I am told, that the county must look for a new site for a court house, and sell the land it now owns on the east side of the Green to the city or to some other purchaser. It is also agreed on all hands, as I am told, that the court house should, if possible, be located on the north side of and facing the Green. This is the con- clusion reached by Messrs. Tilson, Beach, Day, White, Wolfe and Webb, as I am informed.
The Edwards site is owned by Trinity Church Corporation, and, while not formally upon the market, can, as I believe, be bought by the city or county. Nor do I know that the Sargent property is on the market, but it is reasonable to sup- pose that it may be acquired by the city or county in a few years in case it is not acquired by the hotel syndicate. Pro- priety and convenience point to the Sargent and Edwards sites as the site of the new county court house, unless the same should be made the central building of a group, with the hall of records on the Sargent site and the library on the Bristol site-by all odds the better arrangement.
The City Hall Overcrowded
The next generation will have a city hall problem. The present building is barely large enough for the transaction of the business of the city to-day. If the city continues to grow, the City Hall must be enlarged. That will hardly admit of question. For this purpose the city should look forward to buying from the county the present county building, and the site, now owned by the county, of the Law Chambers.
25
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
If the city allows this opportunity to pass and the county to find another purchaser for the county plot, then the city will be compelled to buy either the expensive Leffingwell site or a site in Court Street beyond the Police Court building-an inconvenient location, to say nothing more. The official resi- dence of the city should be the best residence in the city and should have the best and most dignified location.
Grouping Public Buildings
If the above plan could be carried out, we should then have on the entire north side of the Green, between Temple and Church streets, a group of three public buildings. These buildings, if designed, as they of course would be, to harmon- ize with each other, or better, as an organized group of related structures, would form a group of public buildings upon the most conspicuous side of the Green and add immeasurably to the dignity and beauty of the center of our city. The loca- tion of the hall of records and the county court house side by side would afford a greater amount of convenience to the public than any other plan that could be devised.
The Graduates Club's New Front
When the Graduates Club Association builds a new front to its clubhouse, as it must do ere long, the new front would undoubtedly be designed to harmonize with the other new buildings, if the plan proposed above is adopted. Is it too much to expect that all future buildings on sites facing the Green would then be designed to harmonize with the civic center group?
A Great Hall for the City
In time, as it seems to me, the site of the old Ingersoll26 mansion may possibly be occupied by an art museum, or, better yet, by a great hall for public gatherings of all sorts-a hall
26 Built for Hon. Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll, father of the late Governor Charles R. Ingersoll; Architect not ascertained; the house was occupied
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NEW HAVEN :
for the people of the city without regard to social or religious affiliations, a hall as free to the people of the city to use as Woolsey Hall is free to the university to use, a hall which shall be to New Haven what Faneuil Hall is to Boston.
New Haven as the County Seat Emphasized
A court house facing the Green would be one of the most prominent buildings in the city and advertise the fact that New Haven is the County Seat. At present New Haven County as a county has no visible home ; but a fine county court house would give new dignity and interest to New Haven as a county seat. 26a
The Colonial Style
These three buildings, the new public library, the hall of records and the county court house, should, I venture to sug- gest, be built of red brick with stone trimmings in the Colonial or Georgian style. Other styles may be better-purer, more scholarly-but the Colonial style is our traditional style and is a heritage too precious to be thrown away. No style so well expresses us as a people. Our architectural old clothes fit us, and become us better than the new modes from Paris.27
New Haven has, more than Hartford, more than Bridge- port, perhaps more than any other New England city, a home-
as early as May, 1831. For a period of over 150 years, an Ingersoll, as I was once told, had a law office in a building looking out on New Haven Green.
26a Since this paper was written, the County has purchased the Sargent and Edwards sites, and a new county court house is in process of con- struction from designs by Messrs. Allen & Williams of New Haven. The design is founded upon St. George's Hall, the "crowning architectural feature of Liverpool," England, completed 1854. St. George's Hall, built from designs by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, is considered to be one of the most successful buildings erected in England during the Greek Revival. The new county court house is to be built of white marble quarried at Rutland, Vermont. The sub-structure will be of granite quarried at Hallowell, Maine.
27 Vide the Yale Bicentennial Buildings, 1901; Carrère & Hastings of New York, architects.
27
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
bred air-a character too valuable to lose. We are preëmi- nently a city of home-bred folks. This simple genuine air is one of the great charms of the place. We who are used to it do not so much notice it, but our visitors feel it at once. And this feeling is best expressed by buildings in the so-called Colonial style, the only style of building yet developed in this country.
We already have on the Green two of the most beautiful buildings in that style in the United States. Other cities may possess finer Colonial churches than either the Center Church or the North Church, but certainly no city possesses two Colonial churches side by side of anything like their beauty and interest. With a well-established tradition for the Colonial style, it would be a gross mistake not to continue it.
It may be that some means may be devised of removing the paint by which the brickwork of the Center and North churches is now defaced, recovering them, as it were, in their original form of red brick buildings with white trim- mings. Few people realize it, but old North Church is a superb piece of brick-laying in the mode known as Flemish bond, a mode revived in this country by Messrs. McKim, Mead & White, when they built the first Harvard gateway in 1890.
Local Building Material
I think we cannot do better than to build a new library and any other buildings that are to go on sites facing the Green, of red brick, and I believe that North Haven brick will answer the purpose admirably. I favor the use of local build- ing materials. We have local stone of great beauty and dura- bility, stone "grown," if I may say so, in our climate and capable of withstanding it; whereas anyone who has eyes to see need not be told that a stone like Indiana limestone is sub- ject to discoloration and is of doubtful durability. We have at hand Stony Creek and Leete's Island granites, admired and used the country over; we have East Haven sandstone,
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rough, but fine in color, durable and adapted for almost all situations where cutting is not necessary; we have trap rock, neglected by our builders, but lately used by one of the fore- most firms in the country in Christ Church, West Haven ;28 and we have the marbles of New Preston, and the Canaan dolo- mite used in the Capitol building29 at Hartford. Our trap rock, when crushed and powdered, is unsurpassed for the body of ferro-concrete-the building material, as many think, of the future.
Brick as a material for buildings of the first importance has been too long despised. Mr. McKim's great group of brick buildings in Washington for the Army War College is being visited by architects from all over the country. St. Paul's Chapel, just finished in New York by Messrs. Howell & Stokes, is of brick and terra cotta 'and justly conceded to be one of the finest modern structures we have.
The New Railway Station
But the formation of a civic center on the north side of the Green is only one of the problems pressing upon New Haven for immediate attention.
The Consolidated railway has engaged the services of Mr. Cass Gilbert, one of the most distinguished of all American architects, to design a great railway station which will form a dignified vestibule for the city.30
28 Built 1907; Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson of Boston and New York, architects. Consecrated September 26, 1907, by the Right Reverend Chauncey Bunce Brewster, fifth Bishop of Connecticut.
29 Completed 1879 at a cost of about $2,500,000; Richard Mitchell Upjohn of New York, architect. The original design called for a tower in con- sonance with the Gothic architecture of the building, but the Committee insisted on having a dome (for some unknown reason a dome is supposed to be essential to a state capitol building) and the architect reluctantly designed the present dome to replace the tower which was far more appro- priate to the style of the building, since a dome on a Gothic structure is an anomaly. The architect was a son of Richard Upjohn, "an English carpenter and a genius," who designed Trinity Church, New York, built 1843.
"If the railroad station can be made really a dignified and worthy monument, a beautiful vestibule to the town, it seems that it is, a result
-
29
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
Mr. Gilbert, I may say, in passing, was employed by the city of St. Paul to study its problem and report a plan. With- out any expectation on his part that the suggestions of his plan would bear fruit in this generation, he has been happily disappointed. The citizens of St. Paul have taken the matter up with enthusiasm and splendid progress has been made in the last three or four years. It may not be amiss to say here that St. Paul owes its plan to the initiative of the women of the city.
It is the wish, as I am told, of the president and directors of the road, to recognize New Haven as its home by building here a station in every way worthy of its purpose, and an ornament to the city. To meet this wish Mr. Gilbert has planned a building, which will be as noble in design as it will be substantial in construction-massive, on a great scale. Nor will his work end with the station itself. The plot in front of the new station will be transformed into. a garden, which will in turn lead to trolley sheds of glass and bronze connected by covered walks with the main entrance to the station. I am also told that a group of arcades will be suggested for ultimate erection near the front of the station. This plan might well be made to include a hotel.
New Approaches between the Union Station and Green
The first thought of everyone, when this great plan is fully disclosed to the public, will be : How mean and inadequate the approaches between the railway station and the Green! This brings us to a subject of paramount importance, the subject of improved approaches from the station to the Green. With Mr. Gilbert in the very midst of his creative work, it is almost a crime for him to be obliged to place his building with- out knowing what future provisions will be made for better approaches to the Green, the heart of the City and the center of its life.
worth achieving. The visitor then enters the city through a magnificent entrance into the most attractive section, and his first impression, which is usually the most lasting, will be favorable."
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NEW HAVEN :
The present approach through Meadow and Church streets is inadequate. The present approach through State and Chapel streets is roundabout and too accidental to be dignified by the term "approach." The "Little Orange" Street way of getting from the railway station to the Green has the same objections, and in its present state may be disregarded.
In a few years, with the growth of the city and the extension of trolley lines in every direction from it, a new approach from the railway station to the Green will be imperatively necessary. Our traction problem is entirely unsolved. It is our transportation problem, and the longer we put off its solution the greater the cost and probably the less satisfactory the solution.30a
The New Havener of the future will unquestionably insist on riding even shorter distances than the New Havener of to-day. People living in the entire outlying country will in the future probably pass through some portion of the city on their way to and from the railway station. No possible arrangement of loops and the formation of new centers of distribution in the existing streets can, it seems to me, wholly provide for this traffic. New streets will have to be furnished. This transportation problem is a problem by itself, and it should be studied and studied now.
Stately New Approach to Green from Station through Temple Street
I believe that by some judicious cutting and rearranging of streets between Lafayette and State streets, on the south side of Chapel street, one or more new approaches from the railway station to the Green might be made at a cost which would be more than offset by the resulting additions to the grand list by the appreciation of values. For instance, it
30a Since the foregoing was written, the inadequacy of our present trans -. portation facilities and the congestion at the corner of Church and Chapel streets has steadily grown more acute. The multiplication of centers of distribution by rerouting is imperative. As a city we need the advice of traction experts. See pp. 180-184.
3I
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
seems to me to be feasible to swing Temple Street eastward from the point of its intersection with George Street so as to bring it out back of the Garde Hotel and in front of the present railway station. Commerce Street would be utilized in making this change.31
Such a street, if made of suitable width, would afford a fine · approach from the railway station directly to the Green, which it would intersect midway of its south side, instead of at one corner as does Church Street.
This plan would involve but little cutting, and that little through a section where land values are not high. The cost would be small compared with the immense rise in land values which would at once take place, not only on the new portions of the street, but also on the existing portion of Temple Street south of Chapel Street. New sites would thus be provided for hotels, apartment houses, theaters and stores.
It has been the universal experience of other cities that, as the result of such improvements, land values have been greatly enhanced. New buildings on this street could, without addi- tional cost, be designed with reference to architectural har- mony and dignity.
It requires but little imagination to picture a fine street lead- ing from the new railway station to the Green, forming a stately approach to the largest open square in the heart of any city that I recall, and in itself one of the noblest orna- ments that any city in the world possesses. 31a
The Church Street approach to the Green fails altogether to take advantage of the nobility of the Green itself as a fea- ture of the city. I conceive also another new approach to the Green by way of State Street, but one suggestion will answer my present purpose. . An examination of a map of the city
31 The great approach suggested in the plan prepared by Messrs. Gilbert and Olmsted is even west of Commerce Street-a location imposed by the movement of the site of the proposed new railway station westward to secure the space required for tracks.
31a President Dwight, the elder, in his "Travels," published 1821, refers to the Green as "one of the most beautiful squares in the World." p. 193.
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will suggest a number of ways in which an approach between the new railway station and the Green might be created at no great cost compared with the advantage that would proceed from it.
It was my intention to illustrate some of the ways by which such an approach might be made, but, the purpose of this paper being suggestive rather than definitive, I have decided to let the matter rest here.
Impatience Will Not Solve Transportation Problems
We may fret and scold as much as we choose about the Consolidated road, without making any headway in the solu- tion of our transportation problem, which is growing more and more difficult every day, and which must sometime be solved at great cost. Impatience will not solve it. But experts can do it, and will do it, if we will be reasonable and progressive and give them a chance. They can show us how we may avoid crossing the Green by surface tracks in Temple Street. We must expect that will be done some day, if meanwhile we do not bestir ourselves and solve the question satisfactorily in some other way.
Subway Under the Green Suggested
A subway under the Green has been suggested. If the New Havener of the future does not go under the Green in cars, he will certainly go over it in cars. Why not begin now to plan so that, when the time comes to build a subway, we may not be unduly hampered. This project will not seem so remote when it is considered that the Northampton "cut" could readily be made available for use in conjunction with a subway.
New Haven Needs a New Post Office Building
On the basis of the amount of postal matter handled, New Haven stands about the thirty-first on the list of the postoffices in the United States. Our postoffice is old, small and incon-
33
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN.
venient. We need a new government building now. At best, a new building cannot long be deferred.
Let no one think that a new postoffice could be built so as to fill the entire space between the buildings on either side. The Government requires a forty-foot "highway" or clear- ance around all postoffice buildings. Our present Federal building offends the law as it now stands. A protest to the Treasury Department would probably prevent the proposed extension of the building southward.
A new postoffice building on the present site would have to be built upon a smaller plan even than the present structure with its additions, unless more land is acquired. We should be preparing for the day when we shall press our claims at Washington for new and better postoffice facilities.
The United States Government should unquestionably acquire the eastern half of the block on which the postoffice is located, unless we submit to be treated less generously by the Federal authorities than other cities throughout the Union.
Here, then, is a problem which should be considered by experts, i. e., the right location of a new building on the site, and the public and service approaches to it so that when we get a new building it will fit in with other plans.32
Our Park Problem
Our park system has never been considered as a whole, so far as I can learn, by an expert in such matters-by a land- scape architect-and yet the city spends thousands of dollars on its parks every year.
32 The new Federal building movement took definite form in 1909. In January, 1910, a delegation of citizens representing the Chamber of Com- merce, the Council of One Hundred and the Business Men's Association proceeded to Washington and appeared before the Congressional Com- mittee on Public Buildings. For a fuller account of this movement, see pamphlets, one of which was compiled for the Chamber of Commerce by Hon. J. Rice Winchell, Collector of the port of New Haven, and the other by Mr. Henry Barrett Learned, Secretary of the Council of One Hundred. The writer has for some time now (p. 61) advocated the "Tontine" site for the new Federal building and did so before the Con- gressional Committee in January, 1910.
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