New Haven & Yale
A day after visiting PROVIDENCE, I went to New Haven.
New Haven is one of America's earliest real examples of city planning. Its street grid was designed in 1642, to radiate outward from a central public square, or "green" in the New England parlance. That plan is still the heart of New Haven today. With its urbanized area of 560,000, the city is roughly equal in population to Akron, Colorado Springs, Knoxville, or Grand Rapids. Let's see a quick overview. If it's labeled on this map, you'll see photos below. Aerial image from Google. All other images in this thread are mine. Downtown: Downtown is fine. Reasonably intact, some nice tallish buildings, not too many parking lots. I was there on a summer weekend, so it was empty of both Yale students and office workers. But it appears basically healthy, if lacking anything so romantic as Providence's riverwalk. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a wealthy mid-size New England city. The Green: The green is the formal center of town and is an expansive public park, very much in the English/American style of grassy lawns, broad paths, and large shade trees. Temple Street goes through the middle of the green, and contains major stops for New Haven's bus network. Bus lanes have special red pavers, so car drivers have no excuses. Yale: Beyond the green, Yale University and its famous gothic campus. Broadway commercial area: Two blocks past the square, amid Yale, Broadway and its line of shops begins. This is Yale's student ghetto. I'm sure it's bustling during the school year. Union Station: Back on the other side of town, southwest of downtown, is New Haven's train station. New Haven is on the Northeast corridor mainline between Boston and New York, so there are plenty of trains, including Amtrak's high-speed Acela, normal speed Amtrak, and local varieties. Sorry for blur. Newport bonus: I won't do a whole thread on it, but this trip also included a stop in Newport, RI. Here's my Flickr set if you're interested, with one teaser: |
Looks quite nice. Decent amount of hi-rises too. Of course I'm partial to Ivy League cities, but I have heard that the crime rate is kind of high. One of the few New England cities I've never been to. I did want to thank you for the link to Newport. My Navy shipped pulled in the back in '72. The only thing I recall is not getting a tattoo of horseshoes on my ass like a couple of buddies did. I guess I sobered up some watching them.
Thanks for the tour. |
Nice shots. It's been a few years since I've been that far Northeast but the city still looks pretty good.
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been there five years ago, seemed a nice city and beautiful campus.
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I was last in New Haven in 1982. Stayed downtown and enjoyed seeing the Yale campus. Also liked the hills around the city. Right by Yale there were some scary neighborhoods if I remember correctly, but the architecture in those neighborhoods was such that I'm hoping they've been gentrified by now.
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Nice to see. I'd like to visit some day! :tup:
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Great pics and overview. There's also Little Italy, which is a charming downtown neighborhood and home to New Haven-style pizza.
Downtown New Haven actually has two train stations- Union Station and the newer State Street Station. State Street is being expanded with new tracks and platforms to accommodate the new Hartford Line. Both stations obviously already have Metro North and Shoreline East. And West Haven station, just outside city limits, was recently opened. |
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Cool pics, thanks for sharing!
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Nice pictures! I have never stopped in New Haven; I always drive through it on my way to Cape Cod, and decide to explore somewhere farther north like New Bedford or Groton. Eventually I'll make it there, if for nothing else besides the pizza.
Yale looks as great as advertised. The architecture looks more cohesive than Princeton's, at least from your pictures. Thanks for the New port pictures! I have several pictures for a photothread of mine some time. Newport is one of those cities that blows my mind with the amount of history. Almost literally every corner has something noteworthy. |
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I lived in New Haven in 2004-2005, and the area around Downtown has only gotten better since then. It always had a great restaurant scene due to Yale, but there are now two grocery stores downtown. Broadway is not the only student commercial area. Chapel Street is a few blocks to the south, and has a great selection of restaurants. Once you head west of Dwight Street (either on Chapel or Broadway) it basically turns to ghetto though.
New Haven is pretty unique for a Connecticut city as it maintained two middle class urban neighborhoods directly adjacent to Downtown. East Rock has always been a middle class enclave with a great local public school - very popular with Yale professors. It has its own walkable business district on State Street. Wooster Square was the traditional Italian neighborhood and has gentrified in recent years. I always loved the Court Street rowhouses, which are (AFAIK) the only intact block of rowhouses outside of Boston in New England. |
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I... I am shocked at that. But I'm scrolling around on Google Maps and don't see any others. Lowell, Worcester, Hartford, Providence, Bridgeport, Stamford... zilch. I really never realized rowhouses were so absent from the rest of New England. Now I'm super curious about the northern limits of rowhouse country. Albany has them in droves. Scanning google maps along I-95, the only place I see them northeast of New York City itself is in Yonkers, and even there they're mostly detached or duplexes. My mind is blown. |
By the way, one of my favorite things to see on the drive up to Cape Cod to visit my uncle when I was a kid was the Rusty Scupper restaurant on Long Wharf Drive and the waterfront, right by I-95. I think it closed a few years ago. New Haven Harbor was always an interesting sight, and back when I was a kid it was the beginning of the stereotypical New England (although I-95 crossing over that little stream in Cos Cob marks the beginning of the New England landscape for me now).
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There are rowhouses in New England, but, yeah, they're uncommon. Once you get past Westchester County, rowhouses are relatively rare. And when you see rowhouses, they're almost always interspersed with other housing typologies. Even the Bronx never built rowhouses like you see in Brooklyn or NJ or PA.
Here's a typical New England rowhouse neighborhood in Bridgeport, CT: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ha...855294!6m1!1e1 The Hudson River Valley is somewhat of an exception, though. There are plenty of rows in the river towns between NYC and Albany. |
I've been looking and have found a few in Manchester and Portsmouth, too.
Still, much more rare than I'd have assumed. |
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NYC-Boston is triple-decker territory. |
I am now fascinated by this and am crowdsourcing a map to find the boundaries of rowhouse country. Help if you can!
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