Not Godfrey's goat. But you get the idea.
A parking garage under the Green? Not on the Proprietors' watch.
The Green almost had an underground parking garage and a statue of JFK — and it did at one time have a state house and Seth Godfrey’s goat.
As the city, the Proprietors, the just-formed New Haven Green Conservancy and other “stakeholders” of all kinds are weighing in on the next turn in the evolution of the Green’s uses, here is just a taste of what was and what might have been on the city’s central greenspace over the past four centuries.
The entries in this incomplete timeline of the Green’s history are culled from the New Haven Free Public Library’s Local History Room, and that collection’s clipping files and chronicles of the Green by Henry T. Blake, Rollin Osterweis, and other sources at the NHFPL Ives branch.
The one exception is the anecdote about Godfrey’s goat, which came not from the archives but straight from the (human) source.
Back in 1975, when Godfrey, a long-time city librarian, was still in high school and aspiring to become a veterinarian, he went to the live market that was then legal on Ella Grasso Blvd. and bought a goat. His goat, which he named Ilyich, was a little sickly and as Godfrey had learned in history class that an early use of the Green had been as a grazing ground, he naturally took the critter there so it might graze and revive.
A city police officer greeted him and said, in effect, Nice goat, but the uses of the Green have changed a bit in, oh, the last 300 years, and I’m afraid you can’t go grazing.
That real-life tale of a boy’s love for his goat suggests that nearly every New Havener has a story or memory of the Green, personal or collective, or likely both.
Ok. Now to other notable moments in the history of the Green.
1639: The New Haven Green enters official history in court records that refer to it as the “markett place.” (It will continue to be called a marketplace until the mid-18th century when Green appears.) Alas, the first public use of the market place was the beheading, on Oct. 29, of an Indian named Nepaupuck. He’d been held in the stocks several days until sentence was decreed, and then, so say the Records of the Colony, “his head was cut off the next day and pitched upon a pole in the markett place.” A watch house (for the night police), and a prison house, and (likely) burial ground are also in evidence.
1643: Ezekiel Cheever teaches in the first school house, erected likely behind where United Church is today. He prepares students for the only college in America, Harvard, but doesn’t last long as he falls into religious disagreement with the Puritan elders.
1646: The first meeting house is built with an early use recorded as an interrogation location for a local sachem named Uncas called in to explain his alleged misbehavior. No details provided.
1717: A state house is built as New Haven becomes the capital of the colony, with this structure as well as the other early buildings likely having been erected in the northwest corner, near today’s College and Elm streets.
1759: American elms and buttonwood trees planted, revitalized in 1840, and then many replaced in 1980 with Dutch elm disease-resistant varieties.
1769: Nathan Hale, only a freshman at Yale, and before his heroics in the upcoming Revolution, was known as an excellent broad-jumper and likely participated in athletic competitions on the Green
1774: Yale commencement is held on the green likely with demonstrations, referred to in the sources as “great tumults,” on this occasion, young people’s erection of a liberty-pole.
1776: Public gathering ensues for the reading of the Declaration of Independence and somewhat later George Washington addresses soldiers from New Haven on the Green
1784: Wells are dug in all four corners of the Green, likely to feed the cattle (and goats!) that are allowed to graze (until 1821).
1800: The Green is bisected by Temple Street.
1810-ish: Fences are erected, first wooden, then iron and stone, and they enclose the Green, both upper and lower halves.
1820-ish: The three churches are by now all built, more or less, all facing the splendid new Temple Street
A clock, for public time-keeping, is installed in Center Church.
1825: The last slave sale concludes on the Green
1876: A hot air balloon, 72 feet in circumference, and surrounded by smoke and fireworks, rises over the Green with the words “Centennial 1776, 4th of July 1876.”
1907: The Bennett Memorial (drinking) Fountain appears, its significance being in part that it’s the first permanent structure to appear on the Green since the building of the iconic three churches.
1929: The flag pole, and World War One memorial is erected. It’s the same location where the Revolutionary “liberty pole” had stood.
1932: A temporary bandstand, erected by Yale, had been in use for 30 years and, due to structural weaknesses, is finally torn down.
1941: People, including many New Haveners who do not own telephones, assemble on the Green to hear news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war that follows.
1947: An underground garage, proposed by the Chamber of Commerce and rejected by the Proprietors, still percolates for another five years with Mayor Celentano, who had proposed a referendum to decide the gnarly issue, finally backing down under intense general public opposition.
1964; Mayor Richard Lee proposes the erection of a permanent statue of his patron President John F. Kennedy. Proprietors and public opinion are against the idea, although it was obviously politically sensitive. The Proprietors deliberated for three months and their president Louis Hemingway is recorded as quipping, “William McKinley spoke here, and he was assassinated, and we do not have a statue for him … Abraham Lincoln visited here, and we do not have a statue of him.”
1970: The Proprietors viewed with anxiety and “profound concern” a mass political rally around the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale because the “descent” of 50,000 plus people it was attracting had “possible consequences to the Green and other property.” The Proprietors ultimately consented in the service of free speech, and no serious damage was done to the Green.
1971: A 19-story sky-scraper is proposed not on but across from the Green at Church Street facing the northeast corner of the square. Opposition centered around the building’s “not being in harmony with the other buildings around the Green,” and ultimately the height was reduced and reflective glass eliminated.
1985: In the aftermath of the Brian Alden Jazz Festival on the Green when vendors meandered, without formal permission, onto the western edge of the lower Green, the Proprietors agree to an experimental concept that would allow buying and selling but would give the committee control over it. Proprietors Chairman Thomas Hooker says the move is an unprecedented (formal) departure from a historic policy dictating that no money was ever to change hands on the Green.
1996: Established in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley, and Roslyn Meyer, the Arts & Ideas festival is a 15-day-long event at the beginning of summer featuring concerts, plays, lectures, games, and entertainment utilizing multiple areas of the Green and headquartered there.
2011: Occupy New Haven provides a stress test for the free speech principles of the Proprietors and city when a group protesting income inequality camps out on the Green for close to six months and also sues to eliminate the Proprietors. All ends well enough.
On May 21 of this year, the arrival of the Rapture is marked on the Green, per the apocalyptic predictions of Family Radio preacher Harold Camping. Some locals think the Green, originally laid out to be a launching pad for these very events in colonial times, might be just the place for the End Times.
2012: Civil War time capsules and human burial remains are uncovered when Hurricane Sandy topples a large oak on the upper Green near the colonial burying ground.
2018: Following a summer wave of synthetic marijuana poisonings and overdoses on the Green, pop-up concerts and cultural events are organized by the Proprietors to attract city residents to the Green not for the sake of buying and consuming drugs, but for the sake of enjoying art and each other’s company.
2019: Christmas tree lightings, llamas, dromedaries and petting zoos, horse-drawn carriage rides at holiday time, continue as a regular feature of holiday celebrations on the Green — it’s not “grazing” as in the old days, but the Green feels commodious and big enough to embrace an animal presence now and then.
2025: To be determined!
See below for other recent articles about the Green.
• Green Conservancy Debuts
• Town Green: Make That Doughnut A Danish
• Green Proprietor: “We Are Not The Committee Od ‘No’”
• City Historian: The Green’s Constant Is Change, & “Public Good”
• Prof/Filmmaker: The Green’s Not Just About Fun
• Green Remakers Face Grave Question
• Big Changes Eyed For The Green