Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/New Haven

NEW HAVEN, a city and town of New Haven county, Connecticut, U.S., in 41° 19' 28" N. lat. and 72° 55' 19" W. long, (local time 16 minutes before that of Washington), is widely known as the seat of Yale College. The town includes the city and two outlying suburbs—Westville and Fair Haven East. The city occupies an alluvial plain, from 3 to 4 miles in breadth, at the head of New Haven harbour, which is an indentation of the northern shore of Long Island Sound, extending inland about 4 miles, and formed by the confluence of three small rivers flowing through the township; the plain is partly enclosed on the east and west by two prominent trap rocks, with precipitous faces towards the city, respectively 360 and 400 feet in height. The mean annual temperature is 49° Fahr.; and the city ranks among the healthiest in the United States. It is 74 miles north-east from New York, with which it is connected by rail, as well as by daily steamboats; it has communication by three railway lines with Boston, 120 miles to the north-east, and two other railways have their termini here.

The central and older portion of the city is laid out in regular squares, surrounding a public green of 16 acres, on which stand the three oldest churches and a building formerly used as a State-house; the abundance and beauty of the elms planted about this square and along many of the streets has caused the place to be familiarly known as the “Elm City.” On the squares bordering upon this central park are the interesting grounds and buildings of Yale College, the city-hall and county court-house, the post-office and custom-house, and several churches.

The college buildings include six dormitories (accommodating about 400) for the undergraduate academical department, which contains 620 students, under 36 instructors; and there are thirteen buildings for recitation rooms, laboratories, museums, library, &c. The handsome buildings of the theological department are in the immediate vicinity. Other public buildings are—the general hospital and training school for nurses, an armoury, the orphan asylum, the almshouse, the county prison, the halls of the Sheffield Scientific School, the college observatory, and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. The finest private residences are in the section of the city north of the central square. There are ten smaller squares within the town limits, and two private parks, of 55 and 30 acres respectively, the smaller being the college athletic grounds. A beautiful park of 352 acres (partly in an adjoining town) was opened in 1881; it lies 2 miles to the north-east of the city green. The public buildings include sixty-one places of worship, of which nineteen belong to the Congregationalists, the only denomination in the town for a century after its settlement; twelve to the Methodists, first organized here in 1795; eleven to the Protestant Episcopal Church, first organized about 1736; seven to the Baptists, who formed a church here in 1816; and seven to the Roman Catholics, whose first church was erected in 1834. There are thirty-six public schools; the expenditure for their maintenance was $368,000 in 1882-83. Twenty-nine schoolhouses owned by the town, with their furniture and grounds, represent an outlay of about $675,000. There are also about twenty private schools, the oldest being the Hopkins Grammar School, founded in 1660.



Plan of New Haven.