Opposite the Old Campus, on Chapel Street, in New Haven, Connecticut: from when the glaciers melted, stewarded by the Quinnipiac people; in 1614, charted by a Dutch explorer; in 1638, colonized by Puritans; before, during, and after the American Revolution, home of the Founding Father, Roger Sherman, his wife Rebekah, their fifteen children, and the Sherman family store; in 1860, Gaius F. Warner's Italianate villa, by Henry Austin; in 1880, Carll's Opera House; in 1884, the Republican League; in 1887, the Hyperion; in 1903, the Union League Club, by Richard Williams; in 1926, the Roger Sherman Theater; beginning in 1977, a tradition of French fine dining, which continues today. While the Roger Sherman house is no longer standing, it holds up all right.
"The New Haven home of Roger Sherman — signer of the Bill of Rights, Articles of Confederation, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution of the United States — was drawn by hand for, 'The Commonwealth of Connecticut, Tercentenary Edition, 1635 - 1935,' by Amy Drevenstedt, 'published for your entertainment and enlightenment by the Children's Bookshop of 33 Wall Street, New Haven.'"
"The Yale man, from the primeval days of the College up to the present time... has waxed so much more important, so much more interesting in these last few years... Yea, verily, he is a creature of fads and fancies, yet not, as a rule, feminine... He is not, however, the absolutely independent creature he was in the good old days of life-at-Yale."
"The primary cause of the first regular engraving being performed in New Haven appears to have been the battle or action at Lexington. When the news of this affair reached New Haven, Arnold, as has been stated, started with about forty volunteers. Among this number were Mr. Amos Doolittle, and a Mr. Earl, a portrait painter. These young men were, no doubt, powerfully excited by what they saw and heard at the scene of action, and on their return to New Haven endeavored to show to their excited countrymen pictorially the opening scenes of the great contest which had now fully begun."
"Very early the next morning, General George Washington reviewed the local troops on the Green and set out to continue their journey, escorted as far as the historic 'Neck Bridge' by the Second Company of the Governor's Guard, another uniformed company and the company that had been recruited from the students of Yale College, and accompanied by a great number of the inhabitants of the town. Noah Webster, heading the procession with his fife, or to use his own words, 'It fell to my humble lot to lead this company with music.'"
"The atmosphere of a university is the subtle creation of its history, traditions, and surroundings, and is an element as vital as its more tangible properties. If, as Syrus says, 'Discipulus est priori posterior dies,' antiquity is a factor in its influence which neither wealth nor equipment nor even a high order of instruction can supersede. If we wish to take a true estimate of the genius of the institution, we must consider the character of the men who attended its birth and impressed themselves upon its youth, the molding force of the events through which it has passed, and the ideals toward which it has always striven."
"The ironmonger opposite South College uses his front yard to advertise his wares. On the door-steps is a pair of 'portal-warding lion-whelps.' On one side of the walk is a deer with liver-colored mottlings, and on the other a realistic Newfoundland dog. In the center of the right-hand grass plot is a bathukolpos sphinx on a pedestal, and in the centre of the left-hand plot an ornamented fountain with goldfish. On the edge of the basin squats a large green frog."
"We enter, directly beneath the great Rotunda, the so-called Crypt, a circular chamber with a coronade of forty Doric columns, modeled after the Temple at Paestum. These columns are surmounted by groined arches supporting the floor above. The exact center of the Capitol building is indicated by a star in the pavement... The sub-basement, below this crypt, was originally planned to contain the tomb of George Washington. Since 1865 it has been the receptacle of the bier used to sustain the coffin of Abraham Lincoln and other notable Americans who have lain in state in the Capitol."
"Time and tempest felled it at last; but it blooms here in marble still, its name is preserved throughout the city as the distinguishing mark of divers stores, shops, and companies; and a pretty marble slab, like a grave stone, in Charter Oak Place inadequately marks where the original flourished until 1856. In Bushnell Park (named after that eminent theologian, the late Dr. Horace Bushnell, who was the chief promoter of this public pleasure ground) there is a couple of Charter Oaks junior, sprung from its fruit; and 'certified' acorns, possibly taken from these younger trees, but supposed to have grown upon the parent, have been worth their weight in gold at charity fairs. Across the Connecticut, leading to East Hartford, stretches a covered bridge one thousand feet long, and taking up in its construction a corresponding quantity of timber. Mark Twain, showing some friends about, told them that bridge also was built of wood from the Charter Oak."
"It is at the fireside that we look for virtue and patriotism; for songs that stir the blood and fire the zeal; for songs of home, of mother, and of love, that touch the heart and brighten the eye. Music teaches all that is beautiful in this world. Let us not hamper it with a machine that tells the story day by day, without variation, without soul, barren of the joy, the passion, the ardor that is the inheritance of man alone."
"The great majority of photographs in this book are from the collection of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. But in order to give broader scope to this visual document of life in early Connecticut, other sources were used as well. These include the collection of Mrs. Edith LaFrancis (for all the striking photographs taken by George and Alvah Howes), the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University (for selected scenes of life at early Yale)..."
Roger Sherman house 