By Marie Connors Where is Clamtown?  Would you consider an oysters a delicacy?  Why did the oyster business virtually die in the Quinnipiac River in New Haven? In her book on Fair Haven, Doris B. Townshend   explains that originally the town named “Dragon” was known colloquially as Clamtown. This was a hot spot on the Quinnipiac River (older spelling “Quinepiac”) where an annual oyster derby took place on September 1 .  For about ten years from 1820-1830 this was a  fun, exciting family-oriented event where muscular men raced in canoes and all kinds of boats to the oyster beds. Once there, they raked up and pulled up with large tongs as many oysters as they could. Then they paddled or rowed back to shore where wagons were waiting to deliver the loads to the oystermen's houses. This was one day of diversion for this little fishing village. By the late Eighteenth Century until the early part of the Twentieth, Fair Haven was a beehive of activit...

By Sam Jensen In the year of 1837, at the young age of fifteen, Donald Grant Mitchell’s romance with New Haven began with his arrival at Yale College. Mitchell was, from the beginning, enthralled by the architectural beauty of the city, and the nature which surrounded and complemented it as a whole. In Waldo Dunn’s biography of Mitchell, the scene of his arrival to New Haven is depicted in detail. Dunn writes, “We of the present need, perhaps, to be reminded of the New Haven and the Yale of 1837… New Haven was then an isolated town of some 13,000 inhabitants—a kind of backwoods Athens. Not until two years later was railway connection with the outside world established… Even prior to 1837, however, the beauty-loving zeal of James Hillhouse had been instrumental in transforming New Haven into the ‘City of Elms,’ ” (Dunn, 43). Having arrived before heavy industrialization, Mitchell’s Yale days were set in a more quiet and quaint City of Elms than it had become by the end of his life....

By Michael Capozzi Edgewood Park is located on the western border of Westville, and occupies over 120 acres. In 1889, the City of New Haven seized over sixty acres of land and gave it to the Park Commission.  Prominent citizens of the area also donated additional land. This included the famed literary figure Donald Grant Mitchell. Also know by his pen name, Ik Marvel, he had authored two prominent works titled  The Reveries of a Bachelor  and  My Farm on Edgewood.  Edgewood Park gains its name from Mitchell’s farm estate titled the same name, Edgewood. Mitchell praised Edgewood as a place away from the urban life and a retreat to nature. It was but two miles from the New Haven Green, however, so Mitchell would be surrounded by nature while still being close to the city.  Being heavily invested in the design of the park, among others in New Haven, he drew a map in 1888 titled “Suggestions for Edgewood Park”.   Mitchell propo...

By Joseph Skiffington “One cannot contemplate these eminences without admiring them, as forming bold and beautiful features in the scenery around New Haven …. They are composed of precipitous cliffs of naked frowning rock, hoary with time, moss-grown and tarnished by a superficial decomposition, looking like an immense work of art.” (Boer, Wareham, 5) This was a description of New Haven, East Rock, and West Rock by the acclaimed Yale scientist Benjamin Silliman. (Boer, 5) The natural of beauty of New Haven and its towering rocky guardians has been something that has captivated the mind and inspiration of many painters especially from about 1825-1880 when landscape painting emerged as an influential artistic movement. West Rock Ridge stands seven hundred feet tall at its highest point made of volcanic rock known as dolerite which when in contact with oxygen gives it its characteristic red color. With a sheered face and its twin East Rock guarding New Haven at the opposite side, We...

Elm Arcade, Temple Street, New Haven, Connecticut And who, that ever, on a Sabbath morn, Sent through this leafy roof a prayer to Heaven. And when the sweet bells burst upon the air, Saw the leaves quiver, and the flecks of light Leap like caressing angels to the feet Of the church-going multitude, but felt That here, God's day was holier--that the trees, Pierced by these shining spires, and echoing ever "To prayer!" "To prayer!" were but the lofty roof Of an unhewn cathedral, in whose choirs Breezes and storm-winds, and the many birds Join'd in the varied anthem; and that so, Resting their breasts upon these bending limbs, Closer, and readier to our need they lay-- The spirits who keep watch 'twixt us and Heaven. --Nathaniel Parker Willis, excerpts from "Elms of New Haven" (1841)