New Haven, CT Summary

photo by gusto

From the pinnacle of American higher education and Yankee manufacturing prowess to the depths of urban decline, New Haven has seen its share of ups and downs. It traces its roots to 1638, when English Puritans established a settlement called Quinnipiac.

The name was changed two years later, perhaps to highlight the town as a “new harbor,” or to recall Newhaven, England. In 1665 the independent colony was combined with Connecticut Colony.

In 1779, British military forces partially burned the town.

The city’s harbor, on Long Island Sound, supported modest trade, but the harbor wasn’t very deep, and its location (north of Long Island) was outside the main lanes of maritime commerce. In addition, New England farms could not generate the quantities of produce needed to support large shipments to Europe, so most of the city’s foreign commerce was with the West Indies. By the mid-1800s, the railroads had begun to draw business away from maritime shipping; New Haven shipbuilding had peaked by the 1880s. The US Coast Guard, however, still has its Long Island Sound headquarters here.

In the following century, immigrants helped turn New Haven into a manufacturing center that either attracted or itself spawned such inventive minds as cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney, who attended Yale University, and native son Charles Goodyear, who developed vulcanized rubber.

New Haven, with about 130,500 people, has struggled in recent decades with economic decline. It was among the first American cities to undertake urban renewal projects in the 1950s, and the first of the 1960s’ anti-poverty programs was launched here in 1962.

Yale University, founded in 1701, continues to attract top-quality students and faculty. The city’s largest employer, the university has been central in the city’s transition from a manufacturing center to a home for knowledge-based businesses such as biotechnology, health care, arts, and entertainment.

New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, Albertus Magnus College, and a community college. The University of New Haven is in West Haven. Quinnipiac College is in nearby Hamden.

Visitors can tour Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and Yale University Art Gallery, the oldest university art museum in the western hemisphere. Three churches from about 1815 still preside over the city center’s 16-acre green, which dates back to the 1600s.

New Haven can be reached via I-91 and many other highways.

Tweed-New Haven Airport provides air connections to major airports in the region. The Metro- North Railroad connects New Haven with New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.