On Chapel Street, in New Haven, Connecticut, opposite the Old Campus: from the time of glaciation, cultivated by the Quinnipiac; in 1614, charted by a Dutch explorer; in 1638, colonized by the Puritans; throughout the American Revolution, home of the signer, Roger Sherman, his second wife Rebecca Prescott-Sherman, their fifteen children, and the family store; in 1860, industrialist Gaius Fenn Warner's Italianate villa, by Henry Austin; in 1880, Marshal Peter R. Carll's Opera House; in 1884, the Republican League; in 1887, the Hyperion; in 1903, the Union League addition, by Richard Williams; in 1926, the Roger Sherman Theater; beginning in 1976, a tradition of French fine dining, that continues today. While the Roger Sherman house is no longer standing, it holds up all right.
"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 key was widening the sidewalk at the corner by providing flexible space for a variety of activities like outdoor seating, displays and other retail activity. This was accomplished by narrowing vehicle lanes on the street to 9 1/2 feet while still accommodating parking, and significantly slowing down the traffic. It also created the defacto entrance to Yale from the downtown."
"When I was at Yale, I had a lot of inferiority and insecurity. Growing up meant getting out all those anxieties. You'll find most people who work hard -- make a lot of money -- have a psychological drive that forces them onward and up. I'm no different than anyone else."
"Schiavone is thinking up new projects, in the atmosphere for meditation that he has created at his offices on Chapel Street in the old Union League building. The Union League, a private, exclusive men's club formed at the turn of the century, once would not have admitted anyone named Joel Schiavone. 'It was for WASPs.' He has taken the former hangout of the very privileged and created offices that bear the unmistakable stamp of Joel Schiavone."
-Image courtesy of the Yale Library, “The Yale Banner, Vol. 43,” 1884 "Music at Yale took an unexpected turn in the spring of 1884. The Glee Club, ever a generous brother to the physically rugged but financially ragged University Crew, staged a minstrel show on behalf of the Yale Navy. The event was put on… Continue reading Yale’s first Banjo Club, by Marshall Bartholomew
"Dixieland banjo player, 1950s style rock-and-roll crooner, Republican gubernatorial candidate and multi-millionaire real estate developer -- Joel Schiavone thinks he can help resuscitate Connecticut's ailing cities. He has plowed millions of dollars into New Haven and is about to launch an even more ambitious 19-block, 1.5 million-square-foot redevelopment project in Bridgeport. A lesser, or saner,… Continue reading Profile of Joel Schiavone, by Steven Mufson