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.
"Let us not stop defending our city’s history. Let us not stop boasting of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin, of A. C. Gilbert and his Erector Set, or of how Buffalo Bill Cody carried a Winchester rifle, built with pride in New Haven. Let us not even stop boasting about how New Haven native Charles Goodyear invented the rubber tire, even though it was by accident."
"The Hotel Taft contains about three hundred guest bedrooms, each connected with a bath, arranged singly or in suites of three to five rooms. The building has extensive public accommodations, including regular dining rooms, private dining rooms, a banquet hall, roof garden and accommodation for small society dinners."
"We found that the ideal way to spend the evening in New Haven was to sit out on the Green. There were other things to do, of course, and we noted that moving pictures appeared to be patronized here as elsewhere. But it was the Green for us, and for many more. The fragrant June night had collected a few early fireflies, and was tossing them idly about over the grass, as an Egyptian queen might play with diamonds. The chimes from Trinity sounded, very sweet. Young lovers passed, arm linked close in arm, head to head. A buzzing of motor cars gave the emphasis of a city to the country vision of shadowy trees and open grassy spaces."
"The Road for the greater part, indeed the whole way, was very rough and stoney, but the Land strong... The City of New Haven occupies a good deal of ground, but is thinly, though regularly laid out and built. The number of Souls in it are said to be about 4000. There is an Episcopal Church, three Congregational Meeting Houses, and a College, in which are at this time about 120 Students under Auspices of Doctor Styles [Ezra Stiles]."
"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."
"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 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)..."
"Numerous converging and intersecting railways, extensive manufactures, and a considerable West-India commerce, contribute to the life and wealth of this beautiful city. Its suburbs are adorned with tasteful villas, and afford inviting drives and charming prospects. Of principal interest among its suburban attractions are the crags known as East and West Rocks — two bold and striking bluffs of trap-rock, lifting themselves, in magnificent array of opposition, about four hundred feet out of the plain which skirts the city. Their geological origin was probably some anomalous volcanic convulsion; and their grim heights may have sentinelled, in remote ages of our planet, the flow of the Connecticut River between their august feet to the Sound."
"No lighthouses guided the sailors, No breakwater sheltered the bay; No bridges of steel spanned the rivers — Just wilderness bordered the way."