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.
"America is moving again — so are Connecticut and New Haven. But to help keep them moving, I need your help in this election. For much more remains to be done. Too many problems are still ahead. Too many measures for the good of this country have been defeated by a narrow margin."
"I do not know what caused the fire. A woman had just finished singing on the stage and the film was being shown. I saw a little smoke and a light which I thought had something to do with the production. Then I saw a piece of blazing material fall from the top of the stage. It was small, but it was followed by a burst of fire."
"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 College/Chapel District today is a well-used, mixed-use area that includes housing, retail stores, restaurants and commercial tenants in upper-level offices. Over 100 restaurants draw people from outside the neighborhood for a variety of dining experiences and for pre-theater dinners on the weekend. Several theaters have been completely rehabilitated. The Shubert stages Broadway shows, opera, dance, musical concerts and family entertainment. The Palace stages a full range of concerts and special events. A number of bars and nightclubs adds to the area’s liveliness on weekend nights."
"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 history of these signs begins at the corner of College and Chapel, the city's heart. Here, New Haven thrives. Yale's faux-Gothic buildings share sidewalks with the brand name stores that feed off the University's economic power. The New Haven Green and the locally famous Claire's Corner Copia bustle with activity. At the corner, a name famous not only in New Haven, but around the world, presides over the downtown landscape — Bishop Desmond Tutu."
"Jean-Michel's paintings contain spiraling active forces, and these forces are a constant. One force is script. Nothing makes him more righteously angry than to get this question, 'Tell me about your graffiti.' What Jean-Michel did was not graffiti. There were statements, there were epigrams, and he wanted you to see them so he wrote it out always in capital letters. That is one current always flowing."
"'One night, it was almost closing time and a dude grabbed the conga then started chanting: ‘Aguacero de mayo [‘May showers’].’ I wrote: ‘Perhaps this has reference to the religions in Cuba.’ Cut thirty years to 1985: I’ve been assigned to interview Toni Morrison, who said, ‘My mama said you should jump out in the first showers in May’—and I froze. Lydia Cabrera, the queen of Afro-Cuban anthropology, wrote: When you prepare the prenda, the Kongo charm, one ingredient may be rain from the first showers in May; it comes direct from God.'"
"Parts of these chapters were written on the tables of Jean Michel Gamme and Jean-Pierre Vuillermet's Union League Cafe in New Haven. I was equally welcome to write at Caffe Adulis, where the three Eritrean brother-owners — Sahle, Fiere, and Gideon Ghebreyesus — even went so far as to twist dials to cast extra light on my table. Similar courtesies were extended by Jeff Horton at Scoozie's Restaurant and John Clark at Zinc. All of these restaurants are in New Haven."