Hillhouse Avenue Historic District | |
Location | Bounded by Sachem, Temple, Trumbull, and Prospect Sts., Whitney and Hillhouse Aves. & RR tracks, New Haven, Connecticut |
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Coordinates | 41°18′52.2″N72°55′23.6″W / 41.314500°N 72.923222°W |
Area | 18 acres (7.3 ha) |
Built | 1792 |
Architect | Town and Davis, Henry Austin, et al. |
Architectural style | Victorian |
NRHP reference No. | 85002507 [1] |
Added to NRHP | September 13, 1985 |
Hillhouse Avenue is a street in New Haven, Connecticut, famous for its many nineteenth century mansions, including the president's house at Yale University. Both Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have described it as "the most beautiful street in America." [2] Much of the avenue is included in the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District, which extends to include houses on adjacent streets. [3]
The avenue is named for James Hillhouse (1754–1832) (and his son James Abraham Hillhouse, 1789–1841), innovator in land use in New Haven, who began the program of tree planting that gave New Haven its nickname, The Elm City, and who laid out the Trumbull Plan for Yale College and the Grove Street Cemetery.
Hillhouse Avenue was initially called Temple Avenue, and was staked out, 150 feet (46 m) wide, by Hillhouse employee, and later Yale president, Jeremiah Day, in 1792. The avenue ran from the Green at Temple Street to a hilltop location where James Abraham Hillhouse built the family mansion, Highwood (later called Sachem's Wood), in 1828. The houses along the wide avenue were set back with room for trees creating a park-like effect. The elms which once shaded the street were lost to Dutch elm disease, but mature oak trees have largely taken their place.
The avenue was privately owned until 1862. Because of the nature of the street, its lots, and its orientation to the nine-square-grid of New Haven (the nation's first planned city), Hillhouse Avenue is sometimes considered to be the first suburb in the United States.
The Hillhouse mansion was razed in 1942 in accordance with a directive in the will of James Abraham Hillhouse's daughter, Isaphene. In time, Hillhouse Avenue came to be divided into an upper, residential area, and a lower portion for public buildings and the Farmington Canal. It is now just two blocks long, running from Grove to Sachem. The upper portion of the avenue, along with the adjacent blocks (and the Dana House), was designated the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. [1]
Yale now owns all of the properties on Hillhouse Avenue except for St. Mary's Church and its parish house. Many of the mansions of the upper area have been converted for use by the economics department, Cowles Foundation, School of Management, and other academic departments, and have been completely restored. Lower Hillhouse primarily includes university buildings, a number of them formerly part of the Sheffield Scientific School. There are several houses designed by architects Ithiel Town, Henry Austin and Alexander Jackson Davis. The area at the end of the avenue where Hillhouse's mansion stood is now part of the Science Hill section of Yale's campus.
Notable buildings on Hillhouse Avenue that are included in the historic district are:
Buildings on lower Hillhouse Avenue, outside of the historic district, include:
Significant properties not on Hillhouse Avenue, but included in the historic district, include: [3]
Grove Street Cemetery or Grove Street Burial Ground is a cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, that is surrounded by the Yale University campus. It was organized in 1796 as the New Haven Burying Ground and incorporated in October 1797 to replace the crowded burial ground on the New Haven Green. The first private, nonprofit cemetery in the world, it was one of the earliest burial grounds to have a planned layout, with plots permanently owned by individual families, a structured arrangement of ornamental plantings, and paved and named streets and avenues. By introducing ideas like permanent memorials and the sanctity of the deceased body, the cemetery became "a real turning point... a whole redefinition of how people viewed death and dying", according to historian Peter Dobkin Hall. Many notable Yale and New Haven luminaries are buried in the Grove Street Cemetery, including 14 Yale presidents; nevertheless, it was not restricted to members of the upper class, and was open to all.
Ithiel Town was an American architect and civil engineer. One of the first generation of professional architects in the United States, Town made significant contributions to American architecture in the first half of the 19th century. His work, in the Federal and revivalist Greek and Gothic revival architectural styles, was influential and widely copied.
A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word mansio "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb manere "to dwell". The English word manse originally defined a property large enough for the parish priest to maintain himself, but a mansion is no longer self-sustaining in this way. Manor comes from the same root—territorial holdings granted to a lord who would "remain" there.
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The Samuel Russell House is a neoclassical house at 350 High Street in Middletown, Connecticut, built in 1828 to a design by architect Ithiel Town. Many architectural historians consider it to be one of the finest Greek Revival mansions in the northeastern United States. Town's client was Samuel Russell (1789-1862), the founder of Russell & Company, the largest and most important American firm to do business in the China trade in the 19th century, and whose fortunes were primarily based on smuggling illegal and addictive opium into China.
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The James Dwight Dana House, also known as the Dana House, is a historic 19th-century Italianate house at 24 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States. This building, designed by New Haven architect Henry Austin, was the home of Yale University geology professor James Dwight Dana (1813–95). It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 for its association with Dana, who produced the first published works emphasizing that the study of geology was a much broader discipline than the examination of individual rocks.
Prospect Hill is a neighborhood of the city of New Haven, Connecticut located in the north central portion of the city, directly north of Downtown New Haven. The neighborhood contains residences, institutional buildings of Albertus Magnus University and a portion of the main campus of Yale University, including the Science Hill area, the Hillhouse Avenue area and the Yale Peabody Museum. The City of New Haven defines the neighborhood to be the region bounded by the town of Hamden in the north, Winchester Avenue in the west, Munson Street/Hillside Place/Prospect Street in the southwest, Trumbull Street in the south, and Whitney Avenue in the east. Prospect Street is the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood.
The Prospect Hill Historic District is an irregularly-shaped 185-acre (75 ha) historic district in New Haven, Connecticut. The district encompasses most of the residential portion of the Prospect Hill neighborhood.
The Whitney Avenue Historic District is a historic district in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. It is a 203-acre (82 ha) district which included 1,084 contributing buildings when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert was an American architect of the late-19th and early-20th centuries best known for designing townhouses and mansions.
Science Hill is a planning precinct of the Yale University campus primarily devoted to physical and biological sciences. It is located in the Prospect Hill neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut.
Betts House, also known as the John M. Davies House or Davies Mansion, is a mansion owned by Yale University in the Prospect Hill Historic District of New Haven, Connecticut. Completed in 1868 and designed by Henry Austin, it was sold to Yale in 1972 and is now home to the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
Steinbach Hall, also known as the John Pitkin Norton House, is a historic building on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S..
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