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.
"At the Republican League, now Union League, New Haven, in 1898, twenty years after organization, what was called the Old Guard was originated, all being members on the original roll... We were distributed in different rooms before the banquet, playing billiards or cards, when word came from Bushnell accompanied by a tumbler (no dwarfed glass of today) filled with what was claimed to be ginger ale with a dash of red liquor."
"The Republican League club held their first shore dinner last night at Hill's homestead at Savin Rock. About half a hundred members of the club were present and many more who had gone out of the city to escape the suffocating weather sent their regrets... The regular shore dinner was served in elaborate style, consisting of: Little neck clams, stewed clams, bluefish, fried clams, broiled oysters, soft shell crabs, cold lobsters, champagne, appollinaris. The champagne had to be furnished by the club, as nothing could be bought of that kind at the shore."