From Revolution to urban revitalization

COURTESY WINDSOR PUBLICATIONS A prosperous vision of Chapel Street in the 1950s.

On April 24, 1638, John Davenport and 500 of his followers landed on the shores of the Long Island Sound. Davenport, a Puritan minister, believed that God was on the verge of punishing England for its "manifold and persistent wickedness." He hoped to found a new Zion on the banks of the Quinnipiac River, a Utopia where his group of predestined saints could prepare for the second coming of Christ and the final Day of Judgment. With Davenport came the wealthiest group of merchants to arrive in any New England settlement before 1660, a group that was supposed to found a commercial empire stretching from the Sound all the way to the Delaware Bay.

Things started well. The settlers negotiated with the local Quinnipiac tribe, securing a huge amount of land in exchange for "twelve coats of English trucking cloath, twelve alcumy spoons, twelve hatchetts, twelve hoes, two dozen of knives," as well as promises of protection from the neighboring Mohawks. They built a town on a grid of eight squares arranged around a large public green and named it New Haven. They were good Puritans, banning all Sabbath activity, from cooking to shaving to kissing one's own children, and giving the death penalty to anyone who questioned their ideology. And they kept slaves; Davenport himself was a slave owner.

But the events that followed belied such orthodoxy. During the 1770s, New Haven was a bastion of revolutionary activity. "The Stamp Act is unconstitutional and therefore not binding on the Conscience," wrote Samuel Bishop in the Town Record. "We have already bravely gone too far to retreat: If we are fit for anything but the Chains of Slavery, if we have the Spirit of a Free People, the most threatening Danger cannot shake us." When the war ensued, Yale president Ezra Stiles watched through a telescope as British troops landed in the city's harbor. These same troops ultimately defeated New Haven's militia and plundered the defeated town.

The 19th century brought the Amistad affair to the Elm City. A group of Africans held captive on the Spanish slave ship Amistad were detained in the County Jail on Church Street, and their daily exercise periods on the Green drew curious and admiring crowds. Abolitionist Yalies and New Havenites worked together to supply the Africans with a legal defense fund and provided for their education and physical well-being.

COURTESY WINDSOR PUBLICATIONS New Haven: America's first gridded city.

Town-gown relations, though, were not uniformly peaceful. In 1854, a mob followed a group of students from a concert back to the Yale campus. When the students broke into a traditional student song after reaching the upper Green, the mob started throwing bricks, and the students reacted by firing their pistols into the crowd. In the confusion, the mob leader was stabbed to death, and the students had to hide in a dorm and wait for the police to come and save them from a cannon attack. In 1858, another group of students had a violent confrontation with the local fire department, and a fireman was fatally shot. The result: from then on, Yalies were forbidden to carry weapons.

While students and New Haven citizens raged against one another, the city's economy shifted from agriculture to industry, sending small arms, garments, tools, and other products to world markets. Waves of immigration from Europe ballooned the city's population from 10,678 in 1830 to 40,000 between 1850 and 1860. The structure of the city was also changing; Wooster Square became New Haven's manufacturing center, as cramped, congested tenement dwellings began to arise there. Meanwhile, the other, bleaker side of town became beautified by the work of James Hillhouse, the man whose tree-lined streets earned New Haven the nickname "The Elm City." According to Charles Dickens, these elms seemed "to bring a kind of compromise between town and country; as if each had met the other halfway and shaken hands upon it."

` However, much of today's New Haven was built between the 1890s and 1920s, as the city completed its transformation into an industrial metropolis. Its population reached 162,537 by 1920, thanks to yet another wave of immigration consisting of Southern Italians, Eastern
Europeans, and African Americans hailing from the
American South.

But by the 1950s, the age of expansion and prosperity ended in New Haven. Middle and upper income families moved out of the city and into the suburbs. New Haven's population held steady while the population of the outlying areas exploded. As business and industry mimicked the upper class' urban exodus, the city's tax base began to erode. New Haven then had to suffer the disastrous urban renewal plan initiated by eight-term Democratic mayor Richard C. Lee. Neighborhoods were razed to build the six-lane Oak Street Connector--6,500 housing units were torn down, and only 951 were built in their place. Struggling businesses were displaced by the Chapel Square Mall. The results did nothing to help New Haven's economy. The department stores in the Mall soon closed, the Oak Street Connector went unfinished, and, by the late 1970s, New Haven teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, unable to pay the electric bills for its own street lights.

Indeed, the grand plans of New Haven's original settlers never were realized. The Day of Judgment didn't arrive as scheduled, the presence of Dutch settlers to the south and west prevented the establishment of a commercial empire, and the growth of commerce in Boston and New Amsterdam (New York City) turned New Haven into a satellite town. The commercial successes that the Elm City did boast were followed by tough times and poorly crafted remedies.

Fortunately, in the last two decades, the city has put forth a more intelligent and conscientious effort to bring life back to downtown. Embracing rather than rejecting its role as a small city, New Haven has applied facelifts to the Broadway and Chapel Street areas, with new stores and businesses springing up along the fresh brick sidewalks. It has also pumped money into the Ninth Square area near the New Haven Coliseum, renovating one strip of Orange Street in an effort to lure new clubs and restaurants. Last year, the four-star, 270-room Omni Hotel opened on Temple Street.

Your parents might stay at that same Omni for your graduation, but the town around you will be vastly different by 2003. Bolstered by its new status as one of 15 federal Empowerment Zones,City Hall claims to be at the forefront of a $1.5 billion plan to "renew Southern Connecticut." The government plans to build a new recreational center around the Yale boathouse ($28 million), erect new downtown train and bus depots (combined: $20 million), and shell out another million for a trolley bus route to complement the current transit system. When this plan is combined with New Haven's $100 million investment in its portion of high-speed railway along the Northeast Corridor, getting to and around the Elm City will be easier than ever.

But what will a traveler encounter here? A new Public Improvements Program and Small-Business Initiative will ensure the longevity of some of New Haven's distinct and historic neighborhoods and establishments. At the same time, Yale's Office of Properties is again altering Broadway, replacing some of its older buildings with a shopping complex that will come replete with a variety of chain stores and restaurants. Moreover, if current planning reaches fruition, in two years ground will be broken in the outlying Long Wharf area for a $492 million mega-mall.

New Haven has found a new energy, but that does pre-empt the city's long-standing penchant for controversy. Citizens and small business have protested the Long Wharf Mall proposal, arguing that it will drain the life from downtown and rob New Haven of its unique character. Meanwhile, Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.'s administration has been accused of using money from its Livable City Initiative to make improper loans to its own employees. This allegation is currently under investigation by the FBI. In response, DeStefano admitted to having "screwed up" but cited naïveté rather than deliberate wrongdoing.

Just as it did during the 1950s and the turn of the century, New Haven is changing. The uneasy coexistence of sensitive, localized urban revitalization and a renewed emphasis on mass-produced consumerism has placed the future of the Elm City back in flux. But with this uncertainty comes a new opportunity for Yale students to involve themselves in the remaking of this city. Excitement about New Haven's future is at a peak. Now the city's arms are open to Yale students interested in improving neighborhoods and initiating community action.

David Wertime contributed to this article.

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