New Haven - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Frederick Ives House (1866)

Frederick Ives (1832-1883) was an axle manufacturer in Hamden. Continuing the business started by his father, Henry Ives, he formed Frederick Ives & Co. with Willis E. Miller and George E. Ives during the Civil War. When George E. Ives left to partner with L.F. Goodyear, the company continued as Ives & Miller, later called the Mount Carmel Axle Works. Frederick Ives’ house at 478 Orange Street in New Haven was built in 1866. It has Indian-style columns of a kind favored by architect Henry Austen.

William H. Taft Mansion (1870)

The Mansard-roofed house at 111 Whitney Avenue in New Haven (pdf) was built in 1870. It is known as the William H. Taft Mansion because the former President (1909-1913) (soon to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court) owned the house around the time of the First World War, although he never actually lived in it. He sold the house in 1921. Extensively remodeled in 2008, the house was recently used as the offices of Research Edge, an independent research firm, which later became Hedgeye Risk Management. More recently, the house has become home to the William F. Buckley Jr. Program, a Yale conservative group founded in 2010.

Bingham Hall, Yale University (1928)

Yale’s first building was constructed in 1718 where Bingham Hall now stands. One of the university’s freshman dormitories, Bingham Hall was built in 1928 and encloses the southeast corner of Yale’s Old Campus. Built of Longmeadow brownstone and cast stone, Bingham Hall was designed by Walter B. Chambers. Funds were donated by the children of Charles W. Bingham. With nine floors, it is one of the tallest on the Old Campus and its student residents make use of elevators. The original corner lantern has been replaced by a replica.

Daniel Goffe Phipps House (1873)

At 614 Chapel Street in New Haven is Second Empire mansard-roofed house built in 1873 for Daniel Goffe Phipps (1821-1903). He had had many adventures serving as a captain in the U.S Navy and spent two years in the California gold mines during the Gold Rush. In St. Louis in 1851, he married “Mary E. Hunt, daughter of Captain James Hunt, a prominent West India merchant of New Haven,” as recorded in the History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time (1887), by Edward E. Atwater. That book goes on to relate that

In the fall of 1864 he ceased going to sea, and became identified with the New Haven Water Company; beginning soon afterward the manufacture of hydraulic pipe and the profession of hydraulic enginering [sic] and building of waterworks, his present business.

There are patents in his name for hydraulic water pipes. Daniel Goffe Phipps was later president of the West Haven Water Company. He died in 1903.

Chittenden Hall, Yale University (1889)

Yesterday I featured Linsly Hall at Yale University in New Haven. The other half of what is now known as Linsly-Chittenden Hall was built in 1888-1890 in the Romanesque style. Chittenden Hall was designed by J. Cleveland Cady and was originally intended to be the first part of a grand new university library as envisaged by Yale president Timothy Dwight V. The plan called for the demolition of the Old College Library (now Dwight Hall), but opposition saved the building and ended the original expansion planned for Chittenden. Eventually, Linsly Hall was built to fill the gap between Chittenden and the Old Library. Chittenden’s main reading room features Education, a Tiffany stained glass window. The building was restored in the late 1990s.

Linsly Hall, Yale University (1907)

This is my 100th post for New Haven. Check out my New Haven buildings Index!. Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University in New Haven combines two different buildings. Designed by J. Cleveland Cady, Chittenden Hall, is a Romanesque Revival building, built in 1888-1889 as an annex for the old University Library in Dwight Hall. In 1906-1907, Linsly Hall was erected as a Gothic building to join Chittenden and Dwight Halls. It was designed by Charles C. Haight, who known as the “peacemaker” at Yale for his ability to unify the architecturally varied campus. Linsly-Chittenden Hall, restored in 1998, has served as classroom and faculty office space since Sterling Memorial Library opened in 1930.

Herrick Frost House (1882)

Built circa 1882 (or 1876?) and designed by Henry Austin & Son, the house at 612 Chapel Street in New Haven was the residence of Herrick Frost. As described in Volume 2 of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), Herrick Payne Frost

in 1856 made his home in New Haven, where after several experiments in various enterprises, in 1858 he formed a partnership with Julius Tyler, Jr., establishing the wholesale grocery house of Tyler & Frost, on State street. This business Mr. Frost prosecuted with great energy and varied success for nearly twenty years, the partnership being dissolved in 1876, at about the time the telephone was just coming into public notice.

Inspired by Alexander Graham Bell’s demonstration of his new invention–the telephone–at Skiff’s Opera House in New Haven on April 27, 1877, Civil War veteran and telegraph man George W. Coy created an experimental switchboard. He won a Bell telephone franchise for New Haven and Middlesex counties and received financial backing from Herrick Frost and Walter Lewis, superintendent of the New Haven Clock Company. Establishing the District Telephone Company of New Haven, the partners opened the world’s first telephone exchange in January 1878 with 21 subscribers.

Again according to A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County:

The new enterprise attracted general attention, and in less than three months after its inauguration it had one hundred and fifty subscribers, and within a year over four hundred. Mr. Frost and his partner were thus instrumental in giving to New Haven the credit of leading the world in this important line. By 1880 capital had become interested in the further development of the system, and the New Haven Telephone Company was merged into the Connecticut Telephone Company, with the late Marshall Jewell, of Hartford, as president, and Hon. Charles L. Mitchell and Morris F. Tyler as directors. This company in 1884 underwent another change, becoming the Southern New England Telephone Company, with a capital of one and a half million dollars. Through the foresight, energy and ability of Mr. Frost, to whom was committed the general management of this great and growing corporation, the lines of the company were carried into nearly every town, hamlet and school district, within the territory in which they operated, and until a very few years ago there was no district in the world with so many telephones in use, in proportion to its population, as Connecticut.