New Haven Green

The upper Green in spring

The crypt at Center Church-on-the-Green

The Green is a traditional town green (common) and was originally known as "the marketplace". It was completed in 1638. The Puritans were said to have designed the green large enough to hold the number of people who they believed would be spared in the Second Coming of Christ: 144,000.[6]

In its early years, the Green held a watch house, a prison and a school.[3] The upper Green also once held the First Methodist Church. The church was removed from the Green in 1848 with a new church built across Elm Street (designed by Henry Austin). The Green also held a succession of statehouses, dating from the time when New Haven was joint capital of Connecticut with Hartford. The most recent state house was erected in 1837, designed by Ithiel Town in a Greek Revival style. Ultimately, Hartford was declared the sole capital and the building was demolished in 1889.[7]

The Green served as the parade grounds for the New Haven militia, who, under the leadership of Benedict Arnold, rushed to Massachusetts after hearing of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revolution. This indirectly led to the burning of most of the city by the British when they landed in New Haven in 1779.

The Green was used as the main burial grounds for the residents of New Haven during its first 150 years, but by 1821 the practice was abolished and many of the headstones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery. However, the remains of the dead were not moved, and thus still remain below the soil of the Green. It is conservatively estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000[8] people remain buried there, including Benedict Arnold's first wife, members of President Rutherford B. Hayes' family, Reverend James Pierpont (founder of Yale University), and Theophilus Eaton, one of the founders of New Haven and the church and governor of the New Haven Colony for 19 years.

On the evening of October 29, 2012, winds from Hurricane Sandy knocked over an oak tree on the Upper Green. Intertwined in the dirt and roots was a human skeleton. The police and medical examiner were called to the scene. The bones likely date back to colonial times, when the Green was used as a cemetery. The Grove Street cemetery that replaced it was chartered in 1797.[9] A small portion of the burial ground is now preserved in The Center Church Crypt.[10]

United Church with Union and New Haven Trust Building in background

New Haven Green with Center Church on the Green

Located on the upper Green are three historic early 19th century churches which reflect the city's theocratic roots.[12] Two of the three churches are the work of the influential early-19th century architects Ithiel Town and Asher Benjamin, and one of them is the nation's first large-scale Gothic Revival structure. Because of this architectural legacy, the green was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1970.[13] The three churches are:

• United Church on the Green (United Church of Christ / Congregational), or North Church, was built in Federal style by David Hoadley in 1814.[14]
• "Center Church on the Green",[15] or The First Church of Christ (United Church of Christ / Congregational) was established in 1639. The current church, designed in Georgian style by architect Ithiel Town, was built in 1812. The Center Church Crypt contains the identified remains of about 137 people, and the likely remains of over 1,000 that are unidentified. Sarah Rutherford Trowbridge has the oldest dated stone (1687) in the Crypt.
• Trinity Church on the Green is an Episcopal congregation founded in 1752, and was also designed by Ithiel Town in 1813, and built between 1814 and 1815. It is the first Gothic Style church identified in the United States.[16] It was consecrated in 1816.[17]

In the lower Green are the Bennett Fountain (built in 1907 and designed after the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens) and the flagpole with granite World War I memorial (designed by Douglas Orr in 1928) and fountain (added in 2003).[18]

While once the edges of the Green were covered with a glorious canopy of elms, planted originally by James Hillhouse, most died of dutch elm disease. In the 1980s, through the efforts of the Garden Club of New Haven, disease-resistant elms were planted in an attempt to memorialize the legacy of the trees that gave New Haven the nickname "Elm City".

Bennett Memorial Fountain on the Green, a year old when this postcard was mailed in 1908

Bordering the Green are municipal, commercial and university structures. On the northwest side of the Green, across College Street, stand Phelps Gate and the Yale University buildings bordering Old Campus. Before the Old Campus was built, the buildings of Yale's Old Brick Row bordered the Green here. On the southwest side along Chapel Street are stores, bars, and such popular restaurants as Claire's Corner Copia. On the southeast side of the green, across Church Street is The Exchange Building (1832, restored in 1990) and the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse (James Gamble Rogers, 1913). This was once the site of the Tontine Hotel, built by David Hoadley. New Haven's Victorian City Hall (by Henry Austin in 1861; restored and added to by Herbert S. Newman and Partners) and the Amistad Memorial are also at this end of the Green. The memorial stands on the site of the jail that held the Amistad captives during their time in New Haven. Spectators came to see them when they were brought out to exercise on the Green and paid 12 and a half cents to view them in the jail.[19]

Opposite the eastern corner of the lower green is the Union and New Haven Trust Building (now Wells Fargo and The Union apartments) designed by Cross and Cross in colonial revival style in 1927. The design is a tribute to the federal churches on the green and even borrows the cupola from the United Church.[20] On the northeast side along Elm Street by the lower Green is the New Haven Free Public Library (Cass Gilbert, 1908). The library was once the site of the Bristol House, also designed by David Hoadley, whose doorway is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[21]

Part of a panoramic view of The Green in a "Souvenir Folder" sold and mailed in 1919. The New Haven County Courthouse is the building with six pillars, left of center.

Next to the library is the Beaux-Arts, neoclassical New Haven County Courthouse. The courthouse was designed by New Haven architects William Allen and Richard Williams, modeled after St. George's Hall in Liverpool, England. The statuary in front of the courthouse is by the sculptor J. Massey Rhind and murals and lunettes inside the courthouse are by the painter T. Thomas Gilbert.[22]

The upper Green on Elm is bordered by "Quality Row", containing some of the oldest structures in New Haven: the federal style white clapboard Nicholas Callahan house, once a tavern (now the Yale Elihu Senior Society), the federal Eli W. Blake House (now the Graduate Club), the federal John Pierpont house (now the Yale University Koerner Center) built in 1767 and the brick Greek Revival Governor Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll House, designed in 1829 by Town and Davis.[23]

• List of National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut
• National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut

• The New Haven Green
• Center Church on the Green
• United Church on the Green
• Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green
• Media related to New Haven Green at Wikimedia Commons

41.308031°N 72.926980°W / 41.308031; -72.926980