New Haven: 1879 An Introduction

Elizabeth Mills Brown, the author of New Haven: a Guide to Architecture and Urban Design and potentially the most important New Haven architectural critic, explained in her entry on the Joseph Sheffield house "it is not the role of a guide book to dwell on vanished buildings." When I first read that entry, I asked myself, "why not?". Taken from the perspective of an architectural historian as well as someone interested in the aesthetic of a place, it is the vanished as well as the present buildings that create the aesthetic history of a city. Indeed, the vanished buildings are likely the most significant. Changes in taste ensure that the most elaborate, the best example of a style (especially as the best, the most eccentric examples are held by those with the most money and style-consciousness) is the first to be remodeled. The expense of maintaining large buildings and the economic changes in cities over the course of the 20th century guarantees that the finest examples of a city's architecture are likely long gone. Anyone looking for the best examples of a vernacular style or a city's most impressive structures at worst must look through the archives of a historical society, and at best by imagining a structure stripped of later accretions or vinyl siding.

What I propose in this blog is to do exactly what Mills Brown says you shouldn't. No doubt, she meant to prevent the melancholy that comes from looking at the past as it was and comparing it to the present, a persistent melancholy for anyone aesthetically minded or fascinated by the design of any historic period. Nonetheless, that is what I will do. Each street, in this blog is presented with a series of components:

Why 1879?
First, is a representation of the street on the Bird's Eye View of 1879, a large drawing that showed all the buildings of the city when it was created. These bird's eye views are an invaluable source for architectural and urban historians; they show in one snapshot an entire city and its buildings (including outbuildings and additions) at a given point in time. Their drawback is that they are drawn from a specific three-quarters view which prevents all the buildings from being from their street facade (though this gives us a good idea of how they may have appeared from back). This limitation also prevents us occasionally from seeing certain buildings because of the interference of taller buildings. A second drawback is the quality. Although more helpful than not, they are prone to distortions, the simplification of forms, designs, and details, and outright whimsy in their depiction of buildings.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of 1886:
Second is the inclusion of the Sanborn Fire Insurance map for New Haven published in 1886. Drawn as a survey of a city for insurance and property purposes, the Sanborn maps allow us to have a plan for the city and (almost) all its buildings to scale. Often further information is added. Buildings are yellow if they are made of wood, pink if brick, and blue if stone. Sometimes they show the location of chimneys, porches, additions, and even roof details (mansards are often labeled "French Roof" on plans). They also show lot sizes, street numbers, information about the water supply system, natural features, and often provide names of businesses or owners. Sanborn still produces these maps for the same purpose. These maps are especially useful for establishing the entire situation of New Haven. Unfortunately, a Sanborn map has not been found of the city in 1879, so there are liable to be differences between the bird's eye view and the Sanborn map. Still, the detail and scale make possible the third element.

The Renderings
My own contribution to this endeavor and what I intend to showcase are my own renderings of the streetscape, block by block, street by street. Often in historic photographs, maps, or charts, you miss the effect that a streetscape and buildings would have in juxtaposition. Often, you find no images of a full streetscape and have to piece together the entire block from separate photographs. Sometimes there's an image of half a building in one and half in another. So, I decided upon a schematic rendering that allows the buildings to be viewed for a given block at a glance These are all drawn by hand, and I'll say now that I am quite aware of their limitations and problems. My drawing skills are far from perfect. Still, it was an exciting project. The drawings are done based on the scale in the Sanborn maps, assigning the correct distances and sizes for buildings and distances (although I had to work from my own scale for the height of the buildings based on photographs and proportions). Each rendering is labeled with the street, the side of the street by direction, and the house numbers.

The inspiration behind the renderings comes from the Baxter Panoramic Business Directory for Philadelphia. I personally find this mode of presentation for a street far more helpful in trying to envision what it was like in a given period. Of course, I am not as detailed as Baxter, but you get the idea.



Building Catalogue
Additionally, I provide a short profile on each building for a given block. I present the address from 1879, the status of the building (extant or demolished), and the identity of the builder and an actual (or hypothesized) date of construction. Then I follow with a brief analysis of the building describing the style, notable features, and its context in New Haven architectural history. Sometimes, I provide an explanation of prior buildings or later buildings on the site. I try and link to photos online when I can.

Sources
When you deal with historic cities, photographic evidence is limited. Not only was photography a late development, but its application to buildings and streetscapes rather than individuals came late as well. Fortunately, most of the buildings present in 1879 survived into the early 20th century, and there is a decent photographic record. Key in my research has been the Dana Scrapbook held by the New Haven Colony Historical Society, a rather odd text with clippings and images from several sources collected in the 50s-60s. It's oddly arranged, but an invaluable resource, and I would like to thank the society for the use of their materials. Second is the website Magrisso Forte LLC which has a large archive of digitized photographs. There is also the Connecticut State Library as well as a Yale Image Archive. I worked through all these sources to assemble a clear view of New Haven. Even despite all of this, however, there are major gaps. For instance, none of these sources have any image of the south side of Temple Street between Crown and George Street. The house at the northwest corner of High and Crown has no image of the main façade. In these instances, I try to reconstruct what I can within reason.

My Connection to New Haven
When I started graduate school at Yale University in 2009, I had never even heard of New Haven. As a Seattle native, I had grown up in a city with an architectural heritage that scarcely stretched back to the 1880s. Although I had always been drawn to historic architecture, I'd never had a chance to really explore it. My time in New Haven was an awakening of sorts, not only to 19th century architecture, but also to some of the most original and unique examples of it. It's New Haven that inspired my love of and blog on the Italianate style, and my time there was fundamentally transformative. Having gained so much from exploring New Haven, I decided I wanted to provide whatever I could to express my thanks, rather abstractly, to the place I grew-up as an architecture lover and critic. Fortunately, New Haven is quite blessed to have several admirers devoted to its history, and the city has many more quality publications than any other of its size. I hope to offer my own accomplishments to supplement this good work.

And with that I say: Welcome to New Haven, 1879.