Green Proprietors Enter 21st Century

The self-perpetuating quintet that has owned the New Haven Green for centuries is coming out of the shadows — at least on the internet — and promising to light up the center of town on dark winter nights.

The group is called The Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven. The group, not the city government, has owned the 16-acre Green since the early 17th century. It sets the rules for what can happen there; it contracts with the city parks department to maintain it. Few New Haveners know the committee exists, let alone that it controls the ​“public” space in the center of town. Supporters consider the group responsible civic leaders who protect the public interest. Critics consider it, in the words of one lawyer (Norm Pattis) who went to court to try to end its reign, ​“a sort of geriatric Skull and Bones Society, a secret society open to membership only upon invitation of those deemed acceptable to current members … a colonial vestige that is governed by folks elected in secret and holding office for life.”

This week the Proprietors sent a new representative to City Hall to announce a new effort to come out of the shadows and carry out ​“a new vision” for the Green that includes public input.

The representative was Christy Hass. Hass retired last year as a top city parks official, in which capacity she worked with the Proprietors. Hass said the group has now hired her as a consultant to manage the carrying out of the new vision. She showed up Tuesday night at the monthly meeting of the Downtown Wooster Square Management Team to describe the plans.

Chief among them: She hopes to install a light show, with changing colors, to brighten the Green at Temple and Chapel between Feb. 8 and March 20.

“In the dead months on the Green, the idea is to liven them up” when the Christmas tree has come down, Hass said. She’s planning three evening events, one involving ice sculptures and music, one for kids, and a candlelit outdoor picnic featuring box meals and solar blankets. It’ll be BYOBD (bring your own blankets and drinks).

It all depends, though, on Hass securing a grant that she’s in the process of seeking.

Meanwhile, the Proprietors have had 2,000 daffodils planted, she said. ​“In the spring you’ll see these and say, ​‘Wow! Flowers on the Green!’”

And they’re working to make more information about their group accessible to the public, with the chance for citizens to communicate with them.

“They have a new vision,” she told the management team. ​“They will try to reach out and get people involved in decisions.”

“They actually have letterhead!” Hass said. ​“There are things that haven’t happened in 350 years of existence. I’m very impressed. The Properietors are anxious to get things going.”

“Do the Proprietors ever meet in public?” asked neighbor Edward Anderson (pictured above). ​“They claim they own the Green. Do they think it’s not time for that to be reformed?

“It’s time for them to come meet with people,” Hass responded.

“With us?” Anderson asked.

Hass: ​“I think I’m their agent.”

Anderson: ​“Our tax dollars have been maintaining that Green for a long time. I don’t recognize their claim to own the Green…. It’s our Green. Not their Green.”

Hass noted that the Proprietors surveyed many members of the public three years ago when they performed a study for improvements. The state and city governments subsequently agreed in 2016 to spend $1.5 million on the first Green facelift in three decades.

“It has been rather invisible. It’s going to change going forward,” Hass promised of the group’s work. ​“The website is going to give people an opportunity to connect with people.”

“Come down! Let’s connect!” Anderson declared.

Management Team co-chair Peter Webster called Hass’s appearance ​“a great step forward” for the Proprietors, and the meeting moved on to other topics.

So far the city has put in LED lights on the Green as part of the $1.5 million upgrade. They work better and use ​“one half to two-thirds” as much electricity of the old lights, said City Engineer Giovanni Zinn. ​“All the time people are saying how much they like the new lighting. It’s been really reliable. It doesn’t go out.” The city has also upgraded utilities on the Green. A new mobile stage is expected to arrive in May, and irrigation improvements are underway.

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who made a career in private practice defending workers’ rights, chairs the Proprietors. She did not return calls for comment for this story. (An aide said she was out of town.)

Other members include former Albertus Magnus President Julia McNamara, philanthropist Anne Tyler Calabresi, and retired banker Robert Dannies. (The group is about to name a fifth member to replace law professor Drew Days.)

The group began with the original settlers of New Haven Colony. The state legislature affirmed their descendants’ legal right to control the Green in 1683, then again in 1723. (Read more about that history here.) And to some extent control has stayed in the family: One of today’s proprietors, Calabresi, descends from the original proprietor Theophilus Eaton, who founded the colony along with John Davenport. (Click here to read a story about her favorite, rebellious ancestor from that period: Theophilus’s wife Anne.)

Calabresi: ​“Stewards”

In a conversation Friday, Calabresi expanded on Hass’s report and confirmed the Proprietors’ intention to engage the public.

“We would like to be looked at as not some kind of inner sanctum,” she said. ​“We take our role seriously as trustees for the community in enhancing the Green and having it securely based on free speech and free access to everyone, and trying to make it as friendly as possible for everyone as possible. We think it should be an open and serene place for people to come and enjoy its beauty in a non-commercial way. It helps us be a unifying place for the community, a place for people to gather safely and happily and enjoy each other.”

Calabresi said her work with the Green led her to support the founding of Sunrise Cafe a few blocks away, where homeless people who often hang out on the Green can get free breakfasts.

With the planned light display, the new flowers, as well as ongoing efforts to preserve dying elm trees and plant new ones, Calabresi said, the Proprietors aim ​“to enhance the Green and make it irresistible to come to it. That is what we’re trying to do — make it so beautiful at night with light, that people come to see it at night in the winter. Make it so beautiful in the spring…. Our ultimate dream of the light show is to illuminate the trees and make it a magical forest.”

Historically, New Haveners decided to set up the Proprietors as a trusteeship to guard the public interest on common lands, Calabresi said. ​“Up until the time they chose five people, [the Green] belonged to the entire community. It did not belong to the government. It did not belong to the Crown.” By setting up the trustees, citizens avoided fights over, say, some people’s desire to build on the land. Today, Calabresi said, the trustees act to prevent commercialization of the Green or other plans that would disturb its historic role as an open space for the entire public.

“If this belonged to the government,” she said, ​“we would have had underground garages. We would have had who knows what on it.”