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 55
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superb trees, which protect the roads from downpours of rain, prevent the roads from being dried out in hot weather, as well as make their use more comfortable to man and beast. These trees, as well as the roads, have constant care. Here in Connecticut trees have been planted along the roadside concurrently with the construction of the new state roads, but the trees have had no care and, as I am told, have mostly died.
I venture to say in conclusion that we shall not in America really enter upon an era of good roads until we begin to organize for their daily patrol and care in conformity with European practice.
New Haven, December 8, 1909.
NOTE: On my return home from the European trip referred to in the foregoing letter to the Editor of the Hartford Courant, I urged Governor Baldwin to officially recommend to the Trustees of the Connecticut Agri- cultural College located at Storrs, Connecticut, the inclusion in the curric- ulum of the institution of systematic instruction in methods of and organization for the up-keep of highways as something apart from the engineering problems of initial highway construction, my idea being that the majority of the students being Connecticut boys were destined to become residents of the State and likely as town officials to have a hand in the care of the State highways and country and town roads. It seemed therefor, good economics . . . to have the State utilize at slight extra expense, its own educational plant for the training of its own sons to look out for the State highways being built at great expense by the tax-payers of the Commonwealth. This recommendation was made to Governor Baldwin in the belief that it is folly to build expensive highways and not at the same time build up and operate a repair organization commensurate with the road-building organization.
As I may appear to have reflected in my letter to the Editor of the Courant, upon Mr. McDonald I wish to add that soon after my conversa- tion with Governor Baldwin above referred to, I discussed in Washington, D. C., the questions of highway up-keep with the late Logan Waller Page, then Director of the United States Office of Public Roads and the author of numerous works on roads, road material, etc. Mr. Page assured me that on the whole our Connecticut roads were the finest in the Union and paid a high tribute to the pioneer work of Mr. McDonald. Mr. Page, whose detailed knowledge of our State roads was a source of great surprise to me, said that Mr. McDonald's work in Connecticut was done before we had built up any American practice based on the use of our own materials and our own conditions of use and climate and that all subsequent road-engineers have been placed under deep obligations to him. It gives me pleasure to pin Mr. Page's rose upon Mr. McDonald's coat.
SAVE THE STATE HOUSE. A LETTER PRINTED IN THE "HARTFORD COURANT" MARCH 30, 1910.
George Dudley Seymour of New Haven has written to friends in this city urging the preservation of the City Hall; extracts from his letter follow :
With the "Old State House" before their eyes every day, I daresay that the citizens of Hartford do not realize in full measure how beautiful the building is, nor how much it heightens the interest and individuality of the city, a fact better appreciated and understood by people all over the state than in Hartford itself. The citizens of a city are the least competent judges of the impression the city makes on the outside public; the old State House means more to Hartford than the people of Hart- ford are themselves aware of. Candor compels me to add that until a couple of years I have had also to deplore the gross neglect of the build- ing and its disfigurement by brown paint. Greatly as the old State House has been improved by painting the woodwork white, the design of the building will never be fully appreciated until the paint has been removed from the exterior brickwork and the building is thus fully restored to its original appearance of a red brick structure with white woodwork. The old State House in Providence was sometime ago restored to its original appearance in this way. The work of restoring the old State House in Boston as a structure of red brickwork with white trimmings is just approaching its completion; the old College Chapel at Amherst has been restored to its original appearance as a red brick build- ing with white woodwork within the last two or three years, and President Harris of Amherst wrote me the other day that everyone who has seen the old Chapel in its transformed state is delighted with it. I hope the time is not far distant when Center Church and the old North Church on New Haven Green will be restored in the same way to their original appearance. I mention this work, going on all around us, to show the great interest being manifested to-day in these precious old buildings that have been handed down to us from the past.
One of the great reproaches against the City of Boston is that it allowed the John Hancock mansion to be demolished in the 60's. The loss of that interesting building is constantly deplored by all Bostonians. It is curious that at about the same time Hartford lost the Wyllys Mansion which stood on Charter Oak place from 1638 to 1865, and probably was richer in social associations, at least, than any other one house in the entire state. If the Wyllys mansion could have stood until 1876, no one can doubt but that it would be standing to-day, and regarded as one of the most valuable and informing architectural documents in the entire United States. If Hartford should to-day vote to tear down the old State House, the people of the country would regard it as a piece of vandalism wholly inconsistent with Hartford's reputation to-day as an
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enlightened city rich in everything that makes American life of to-day worth while.
The growth in this country of what is called the historic sense is no better shown than in the attention that is everywhere being paid to the preservation of such specimens of our early architecture as still remain. Some instances of this spirit I have already mentioned. My belief is that as time goes on, we are, as a people, bound to pay more and more atten- tion to the old buildings and will take increasing pains to set them off by restoring their initial surrounding conditions to them as far as possible. One of the greatest mistakes Hartford ever made was, in my opinion, the location of the Federal building at the back, really in front, of the old State House. That was indeed poor economy. The Federal Govern- ment could have bought, was able to buy, a site which would have served the community far better as far as convenience of use was concerned. The location of the Federal Building elsewhere would have preserved for Hartford the small but historic and charming spot which it now occupies in front of the old State House and saved the old fabric from being over- powered and degraded by the present Federal Building, a design bad enough to have been the work of Mullet, whose master work, the old post office building in New York City, is the master monstrosity of a period from which we have now happily emerged. The juxtaposition in Hartford of the old State House and the post office building enables those interested in such matters to measure the extent of the decline in taste in architecture from 1794 to 1870, or whenever the Hartford post office was built. For my own part I hope that when Hartford has a new Federal Building the present building will be torn down. What a delight it would be if to-day everyone passing the old State House on Main Street could look down that slope and catch a glimpse of our beautiful and historic river which, incomparably more beautiful than the English Thames, gets hardly a thought from the citizens of Hartford as a priceless adjunct to the beauty of their city, and hardly a thought from the citizens of the state at large. The time is coming when the Con- necticut River will be lined with summer homes and alive with pleasure craft, as in the English Thames from Maidenhead to Hampton Court. What a new significance would be given to Hartford if one sailing up the winding reaches of the river from Saybrook could then land at Hart- ford and, looking up, find the quaint old State House before him to greet his arrival. Such an experience would put Hartford in quite a new light "as the head of sloop navigation," to use an old and well-worn expression of long lost but now refound application.
All this is aside from the restoration of the interior of the building with which I suppose very few people in Hartford are familiar. How few people have ever visited the governor's room in the City Hall building in New York. The room, approached by double marble stairways of almost perfect grace, contains one of the most interesting collections of por- traits anywhere on this side of the water. After the "Dames" have completed the restoration of the interior of the old State House, would it not be a good plan to collect there such portraits as may still be
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obtained of the worthies who transacted public business in the building when it was new?
The Connecticut Society of Colonial Dames has been very fortunate, it seems to me, in choosing what to do. The restoration of the old State House in Hartford seems to be a particularly gracious and worthy under- taking.
NOTE : I have made no investigation to determine just when the rage for painting brick buildings began but it was at least as early as 1845 when Ithiel Town's beautiful Center Church, then only thirty years old, was disfigured as a design by a coat of paint though the brick work was exceptionally fine and must have then been in perfect condition, since despite the obstructionists who claimed that the building was first painted on account of the decay of the brick work, it was remarked by the workmen who removed the paint that they found only one or two soft bricks in the entire fabric. United Church not to be behind "Center," was painted over in 1850 and will appear as a new design and shed new lustre on Hoadley, its architect, when it is relieved (speed the day) of its disfiguring envelope of pigment.
Center Church, as far as I am aware, was the first important early brick building which had been painted over when the rage for painting brick work did so much damage to our best designs, to have the paint removed. The recovery of Town's design made a great impression not only on our own townspeople but also on our visitors and among other men and women from Hartford. The cleaning off of the paint from the old State House followed and then in 1917 from the First Church in Hartford and I do not know from how many more buildings in Hartford and elsewhere throughout the State. Several semi-public buildings and private houses here have been greatly improved by the treatment since Center Church set the example.
NOAH WEBSTER OF CONNECTICUT, THE FIRST AMERICAN ADVOCATE OF TIMBER- CONSERVATION.
To the Editor of the Evening Post:
Sir :- I have read with great interest the article in the Evening Post on Saturday, September 17, entitled "Schurz as Forests' First Friend," in which it is claimed in the headlines that the late Carl Schurz "first warned the country against wasting timber," and was the "original con- servationist."
I venture to claim priority for a distinguished son of Connecticut, the late Dr. Noah Webster, and to assert that he was the first to warn the country against wasting timber, and must be awarded the palm as the "original conservationist."
As early as 1817 Dr. Webster declared: "In truth, our country cannot sustain its present comsumption of wood for a century to come. We must either reduce the annual consumption within the limits of the annual growth, or that time will arrive when we must search the bowels of the earth for fuel." Dr. Webster also declared that "the first object that requires attention is to nourish and increase the growth of trees for fuel and timber. Every farm should contain a tract of land covered with trees, the annual growth of which should be equal to the necessities of one family at least. Experienced farmers will best judge of the best mode of treating wood, and for the preservation of the wood, and for encour- aging the most rapid growth."
In the last quotation we find anticipation of the ideas contained in "The Wood Lot," a work recently published by Prof. Henry S. Graves, then director of the Yale Forest School, and now Forester of the United States in succession to Gifford Pinchot.
Every one knows, or should know, that Dr. Webster was born at West Hartford, Conn., on October 16, 1758. Any one who goes to West Hart- ford will be shown his birthplace. But it is not generally known, as it should be, that another distinguished son of Connecticut, Gifford Pinchot, was born close by at Simsbury, in the fine old mansion of the Phelps family "on the street." It thus appears that in Webster, Connecticut pro- duced a man to sound the first warning note on the conservation of natural resources, and that in Pinchot, Connecticut produced the man- and bred him at Yale-who put Webster's plan into effect. It is true that when Webster wrote the letter from which I have quoted, he was living at Amherst, Mass., whither he had retired on account of the high cost of living in New Haven-a condition, I regret to say, that has not yet been remedied.
But Webster, despite the cost of living in New Haven, came back, and here he spent his last days in a house still standing on Temple Street. He was induced to return to New Haven, as I am bound to believe, "by
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the extreme beauty of the town and its air of refinement and repose," and its "simple and pure society," which, said "Nat" Willis, "it is not too much to say is one of the most elegant and cultivated in the world." It is clear to me that your correspondent, who so readily awards the inception of the great principle of conservation of our forest resources to a German-born citizen, however distinguished, has not been a faithful reader of the back numbers of his Courant. I hope he has them in his garret. I commend him to an article in the issue of the Connecticut Courant for Tuesday, April 22, 1817, entitled, "Domestic Economy," by Noah Webster.
"When our ancestors first planted their habitations in this country," the article reads, "the first object was to clear the land for tillage, mowing, and pasture; wood was an incumbrance, and it was consumed without regard to quantity. In conformity to this object wide and deep fire places were constructed; for it was less labor to roll in heavy logs than to cut and split them. Almost two centuries have elapsed, since this work of destruction has been carried on without intermission-our habits have been formed upon this practice, and the annual consumption of thirty or forty cords of wood by a family is considered as necessary, and a matter of course. Provident men, however, begin to cast about for the means of saving fuel.
"In truth, our country cannot sustain the present consumption of wood for a century to come. We must either reduce the annual consump- tion within the limits of the annual growth, or that time will arrive when we must search the bowels of the earth for fuel; and if we are not able to find it in the interior of New England we must import it; or we must abandon the soil. It is of the more importance to attend in season to this object, as at some future time we must depend more on manufactures for our clothing and utensils than we do now; and how are our manufactories to be supplied with fuel?
"The first object that requires attention is to nourish and increase the growth of trees for fuel and timber. Every farm should contain a tract of land, covered with trees, the annual growth of which should be equal to the necessities of one family at least. Experienced farmers will best judge of the best mode of treating woodland for the preservation of the wood and for encouraging the most rapid growth."
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
New Haven, September 19.
MEMORIAL POSSIBILITIES.
To the Editor of The Forum:
Sir :- I have been greatly interested in the widespread movement throughout the country to plant memorial trees and memorial forests in memory of our soldiers who took part in the war. I am sure that our
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state forester, Walter O. Filley of New Haven, will cooperate cordially with all such movements within the state, both to assist townships and individuals in planting. He can be reached at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station on Huntington Street.
One of the chief beauties of the Hale place at South Coventry is the grove of rock maples planted in 1813 by David Hale, Jr., a soldier in the War of 1812. So far as I am aware, the first tree planted in this country in memory of a soldier to fall in this present war is a rock maple planted at the Hale place a year ago by George Cromie, our City Forester, in memory of his gallant brother, Lieut. Samuel Cromie, a Canadian boy, who fell in the fighting on the Somme in November, 1916, only a week after receiving his commission as a first lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards. It happened that I was at the Hale farm on November 11th when the armistice was signed and I celebrated the occasion by planting three rock maple trees close to the grove of maples planted in 1813.
There are large nursery stocks on hand and I hope that within the year thousands on thousands of memorial trees may be planted. One can hardly imagine anything finer than a long avenue of "Victory Oaks." Why should not some of our motor highways be planted with memorial trees such as oaks and elms? Our state highway commissioner would certainly cooperate with individual organizations in planting trees along our highways. It would not be many years before these living memorials would adorn our landscape and be a source of perpetual delight and grateful shade as well as an inspiration to coming generations, witnesses of, and participants in, the "social renaissance" to follow the war.
G. D. SEYMOUR.
New Haven, Dec. 14, 1918.
NEW HAVEN HYMN
"Here peace, beneath thy wings, and truth And law-girt freedom still shall dwell; And rev'rend age to manly youth His treasured stores of wisdom tell.
And here thy name, O God of love, Successive thousands shall adore, Till these eternal hills remove, And spring adorns the earth no more."
Concluding stanzas of the hymn composed by the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon (1802-1881) to be sung on the occasion of the public celebration in 1838 of the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of New Haven.
ERRATA.
Page 195. Change chapter heading from IX to XI.
Page 201. In the poem, "Consule Planco," the last word in the eighth line should read "gilt," not "gift." A correct version of this poem will be found on page 733.
Page 206, last line. For "Mch. 6th," read "Mch. 16th."
ILLUSTRATIONS
GOVERNOR THEOPHILUS EATON'S HOUSE
The Governor Theophilus Eaton House as pictured in Lambert's "History of the Colony of New Haven," published in 1838. The house faced South and stood on Elm Street near Orange.
Governor Eaton's inventory is one of the most remarkable documents of its kind bearing upon the early history of Con- necticut. No inventory of the period is more detailed and none shows equal wealth of fine furnishings. The amount of plate alone is amazing. The inventory, which the author has reprinted in full in his "Memorial of Governor Eaton," prepared for the New Haven Tercentenary in 1938. will repay careful study. In addition to plate, hangings, tapestry, and "Turkey work," the house was seemingly equipped with a profusion of linen. Gov- ernor Eaton was buried on New Haven Green, in a spot now under the rear wall of Center Church. A table monument was erected to his memory but it was removed in 1821, when the monuments and headstones on the Green were removed to the Grove Street Ceme- tery, where a portion of the tomb may still be seen. For further details, consult Henry T. Blake's "Chronicles of New Haven Green," 1898.
In May, 1658, just after Governor Eaton's death, the General Court of the colony adopted the following order :
"The Court calling to mind the good service done to this colony by our late honoured Governour, did order that a comely tombe such as we are capable of shall be made over his grave, and that the estate he left behind him shall be free from rates this year to the jurisdiction."
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DOOR
STAIRS
Crest
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PANTRY, BUTTERY ETC.
COUNTING HOUSE OR LIBRARY
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VIRUSILS HONIG ON THE WALLS
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FIGURE.
GOV. EATON HOUSE DESTROYED
RESTORED FIRST FLOOR
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GOV EATON HOUSE RESTORED SECOND FLOOR.
PLAN OF THE EATON HOUSE
Conjectural restoration of the plan of the first and second floors of the Governor Eaton House, as conceived by Isham and shown in his "Early Connecticut Houses," 1900.
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THE EATON CENOTAPH
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THE EATON CENOTAPH
(From the architect's drawings before the inscriptions were cut into it.)
The Eaton Cenotaph, unveiled November 20, 1938, is located directly back of Center Church but a few feet from the spot where, according to tradition, he was buried in 1657. The author was credited at the unveiling with having been the prime mover in the erection of this memorial.
The monument is fashioned of Longmeadow stone, weighs nine and a half tons, and was designed by Mr. J. Frederick Kelly. A.I.A., after the monument at Kittery, Maine, erected in 1736, to the memory of Sir William Pepperell, Bart.
The inscription on the front panel reads :
THEOPHILUS EATON FIRST GOVERNOR of the NEW HAVEN COLONY "Eaton so faimed so wise so just The phoenix of our world here hides his dust This name forget N. England never must.'
On the rear panel the inscription is
BORN A. D. 1591 AT STONY STRATFORD OXFORDSHIRE OLD ENGLAND DIED AT NEW HAVEN A. D. 1657
The end panels both bear the dates 1638 and 1938.
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PLAN OF NEW HAVEN, 1775, By PRESIDENT STILES
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NEW HAVEN TOWN PLAN: THE FIRST IN THIS COUNTRY; JOHN BROCKETT: THE FIRST AMERICAN TOWN-PLANNER
[From Atwater's "History of the City of New Haven"]
Eaton employed John Brockett (1612-1690), Surveyor, to lay out the now celebrated town plan of New Haven. Brockett subse- quently removed to and laid out the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, after which he went to Wallingford, Connecticut, where he died. The compiler had many talks about John Brockett in connection with the original town plan of New Haven, with Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the landscape architect, when he was here with the late Mr. Cass Gilbert-at the compiler's invitation, in connec- tion with a City Improvement Plan for New Haven. Mr. Olmsted, who was, of course, a student of the whole subject of city planning, could not point out an earlier town plan in this country than that of New Haven by John Brockett. Brockett seems to be entitled to be the first town planner to work in this country, and New Haven to have the oldest town plan. It is not generally known that the New Haven Green, which was to form the Market Square of the great city envisaged by Eaton, remains to this day the largest central square of any city in the United States. The compiler has long hoped that New Haven might honor John Brockett with some sort of a memorial on the Green. A simple granite slab let into the turf, near one end of the proposed cenotaph to Governor Eaton, back of the Church, would serve to perpetuate Brockett's name as the designer of the original town plan of New Haven. Such a memorial, so placed, would be appropriate-though inadequate-in view of Brockett's services to New Haven and his position at the head of the annals of city planning in this country. He lived, when in New Haven, about where Poli's Theatre now stands, on Church Street. His life-story has been included in a recent address by Professor R. S. Kirby on "New Haven Engineers."
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NEW HAVEN AND YALE COLLEGE IN 1812
Central section of Amos Doolittle's map of New Haven, published 1812 and revised in 1817 and again in 1824. I know of no earlier representation of the Old State House (1764-1832) (see p. 235). The Chief-Justice Daggett house, on the axis of the lower Green, is here seen to be flanked by two wings, like the well-remembered Bristol house, standing back of the "Cooper Elms," planted in 1686. The Green formed the "Market Square" of John Brockett's "New Haven Plan," laid out in 1638 under the direction of Governor Theophilus Eaton.
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