This WPA-era mural is one of 27 historical gems hanging in an empty New Haven school. The murals, like the school, are undergoing a makeover.
- * * *
Around the schoolyard, she goes by the name “Domesticity.” She and her buddies (“Athletics,” “Citizenship”) have been hanging out on the stoop for 80 years. Now they, and a trove of historical gems from New Haven’s past, are getting a makeover.
Domesticity and her gang have guarded the front doors of Augusta Lewis Troup School on Edgewood Avenue since it opened in 1925. The school is closed this year as workers begin a $44 million renovation. That two-year job, part of the school system’s $1.4 billion rebuilding effort, includes restoring a breathtaking collection of early 20th century paintings and sculptures, many of them commissioned by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA).
As workers cleared debris from the school on Friday, they stayed clear of the 27 murals that silently watched over them from Troup’s stairways, corridors and grand auditorium and whispered of events from centuries past. On the second floor Singbe (aka Cinque) stood his ground with the Amistad captives. Down the hall Yale was being founded. To one side of the auditorium’s stage, Eli Whitney was inventing the cotton gin. At the other, Lafayette paid a visit to 1824 New Haven.
The rebuilding project has restored murals and architectural details in schools across town, such as Fair Haven Middle and Nathan Hale. Troup has probably the largest collection of such beauties of all the schools undergoing renovation so far, according to Susan Weisselberg, who oversees the citywide reconstruction effort.
The murals looked tattered on Friday. But they were by no means beyond rescue. A local restorer, Patricia Garland, will clean them, retouch them, varnish them, and control the flaking.
She will also perform a makeover on some of the world’s greatest philosophers. Buddha, Lao Tse, Plato, Locke, Kant, ten in all, painted on plaster by E. H. Hart, await a new crop of middle-schoolers after undergoing cosmetic surgery by Dr. Garland.
While the philosophers and inventors and explorers stay protected inside, “Domesticity” and her cast-stone gang have weathered the elements by the Gothic-style arches adorning Troup’s brick front entrance. “Citizenship” has taken a beating, as, you might say, she has in society at large. But she, too, is salvageable.
Troup School has its own colorful history. Its namesake was one of New Haven’s true all-time heroines. She organized America’s first-ever female labor union. She also published a local newspaper that was the first in Connecticut to advocate women’s suffrage, according to a profile by local historian Khalid Lum.
Augusta Troup died five few years before New Haven opened a school in her name. She’d surely be pleased to see her legacy reborn, with its history renewed, a century later.
