A garden party in East Rock celebrated the urban wonders that can grow from New Haven soil — from flowers to journalism.
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The party took place Sunday afternoon in the backyard of Yale’s Cynthia Farrar and Paul Kennedy. Bathed in late afternoon sunlight, the setting served as a reminder of how each day can reveal a new source of beauty in an old city, either by happenstance or invitation.
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That was kind of the point of the subject of this party. It was a fundraiser for The Next American City, an influential national journal capturing young urbanites’ excitement about the urban revival. Adam Gordon (at left in photo, next to Farrar) fell in love with New Haven as a Yale undergraduate. Five years ago he founded the magazine with Seth Brown (at right in photo); they tapped a network of smart young thinkers across the country. They produced a largely volunteer publication that soon caught the attention of The New York Times and came to draw luminaries from Tom Brokaw to Mike Bloomberg to its public forums.
p(clear). Cynthia Farrar helped the two out when they were starting the magazine. They have since moved on to live and work in other states; the magazine has grown and flourished. Farrar invited them back to her home in New Haven to raise money to enable the magazine to start paying its writers.
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The urban-minded crowd, including architect Robert W. Grzywacz (pictured; he designed the rebuilt Celentano School and serves on the Preservation Trust board), engaged in its own informal debates that could have come straight from the pages of The Next American City, about new urbanism, building design, smart growth, and New Haven.
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The backyard filled with people whose love of cities has led them to devote years to New Haven’s civic causes. Will Ginsberg (at left in photo) returned here from a top White House job to run the Community Foundation. Helen Kauder (at right) turned Artspace into a cutting-edge convener of citywide events, like Open Studios, that bring people of all walks of life into new venues for art to explore the community they share.
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The crowd included a champion Independent typo-catcher, Mark Abraham.
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New Chamber of Commerce board chief Michael Morand‘s (pictured) was among the names listed as co-hosts of the event (along with this reporter, a fan of the magazine for years). With Morand and Louise Endel (in photo at the top of this story), two of the city’s inveterate scenemakers, on hand, the afternoon ranked as a bonafide New Haven Event.