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Sneak Peek

by Staff | Apr 28, 2021 9:27 am | Comments (0)

The pandemic has delayed the in-person public opening of one of New Haven’s new landmarks, the $150 million Schwarzman Center encompassing the university’s Woolsey Hall, Commons, and other spaces at Grove and College streets.

But the place is ready. And it is offering the public a ​“virtual reality” sneak peek inside.

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Urban Renewal Reexamined Through Architectural/Preservationist Lens

by Julia Gill | Apr 2, 2021 3:17 pm | Comments (4)

Crawford Manor before redevelopment.

A manor — and a huge swath of neighborhood — erased to make room for a highway.

A housing project gone awry, now demolished as well, while its former occupants win a class-action settlement over the poor living conditions they endured

Architectural historian and preservationist Marisa Angell Brown kept stories like these alive as she explored the architectural history of post-World War II New Haven in a lecture at the Yale Center for British Art, recalling some of New Haven’s most contested issues of the mid-20th century that continue to reverberate today.

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Duncan (Er, “Graduate”), Frews Win Preservation Awards

by Allan Appel | Oct 30, 2020 12:26 pm | Comments (6)

Have you yet peeked into the old Duncan Hotel, now the Graduate on Chapel Street? If not, the New Haven Preservation Trust wants you to know that the old/new pile of bricks still sports Connecticut’s most ancient elevator, pay phones original to the 1894 building, and a return to life of the 200-year-old basement watering hole Old Heidelberg, with original wooden bar and tables.

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Preservation Trust Takes It To The Streets

by Alexis Zanghi | Oct 15, 2020 10:31 am | Comments (2)

Have you ever seen the windows on the fifth floor of the New Haven County Courthouse?

You can find them if you walk halfway down the Elm Street block between Church and Orange, stand in the parking lot next to Kebabian’s, and stare toward the sky above Wall Street. The windows look like glossy portholes on a giant, shiny cruise ship where people sue each other and get divorced. Viewed from Church Street, at street level, the building seems ​“heavy.” But from Elm Street, different openings — like the circular cutouts and large glass curtain walls — give the Courthouse an airy quality.

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Secret “Factory” Life Exposed, Preserved

by Brian Slattery | Feb 27, 2020 3:26 pm | Comments (4)

Courtesy New Haven Museum

Guitar found in the former clock factory on Hamilton Street.

Clocks. The Sex Ball. A punk club, then an R&B club. An indoor skate park. The state’s largest LGBTQ club.

All of these are part of the past of the old New Haven Clock Company building on Hamilton Street.

In the present day, that factory complex is being cleaned up in preparation for development into housing, some of which is to include housing for artists. The reason for that concept — and the deeper history of artistic life in New Haven — is brought to sparkling, fascinating life in “Factory,” an exhibit that celebrated its opening on Friday and will run at the New Haven Museum on Whitney Avenue until Aug. 29.

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Crossing Mill River (District) By Foot

by Thomas Breen | Feb 3, 2020 1:03 pm | Comments (1)

Thomas Breen photo

Carina Gormley on Grand: “My favorite walk.”

The four-block stretch of Grand Avenue between Olive Street and Wallace Street is scattered with empty lots, storefront churches, social service nonprofits, and Italian eateries, all overshadowed by a towering highway overpass and a rich working-class history.

It’s Carina Gormley’s favorite walk in New Haven. She sees the city’s past and present in each step.

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Chapel/State Make-Overs Imagined

by Allan Appel | Jul 19, 2019 12:09 pm | Comments (16)

Allan Appel Photo

Looking west at Chapel and State Streets.

Nearly every day two or three travelers de-train at the State Street Station and make their way over to the concierge at the 360 State Street apartment tower.

After crossing in front of the racing and turning traffic on State Street, they arrive confused, and exclaim: Where the heck is Union Station? Where’s Yale? Where in the world are we in New Haven?!

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New Haven Preservation Trust Hails “Good Works”

by Allan Appel | May 23, 2019 12:42 pm | Comments (4)

Allan Appel Photo

Restored 1833 Brown-Foote house at Lenox and Clifton streets.

A ​“ghost” house in Fair Haven Heights has become a ​“most” house — most beautiful and certainly most shiny and, after receiving a gut-rehab, newest-looking on the block, even though its foundations were laid back in 1833.

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Next Vlock House Must Fit Block’s Design

by Thomas Breen | Apr 8, 2019 7:58 am | Comments (27)

SONYA SCHOENBERGER PHOTO

41 Button St. Vlock house: Next design won’t look like this.

The city has agreed to sell a vacant Hill lot to Columbus House for the construction of a new affordable home.

That agreement comes with a catch: the building, to be designed by Yale School of Architecture students, must fit the look and feel of the existing neighborhood. Or else no deal.

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Next Stop, Red Planet

by Paul Bass | Apr 5, 2019 1:44 pm | Comments (4)

Prize-winning Mars habitat (above); McGhee on earth/ water (below).

A four-module structure printed out at New Haven’s MakeHaven may pop up again in outer space, enabling humans to explore a planetary neighbor up close.

A ​“space nerd” who lives on a sailboat at City Point had the vision, then put together the plan.

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