57 Fun Facts About New Haven

New Haven sits on the northern shore of which body of water?

Long Island Sound carried a British fleet from New York in July 1779, when troops under William Tryon landed on its shore and raided New Haven.

A civic drive to line New Haven's streets with shade trees earned the city which nickname?

The Elm City. Elms planted along New Haven's streets and Green formed leafy canopies until Dutch elm disease killed most of them in the 20th century, though many have since been replanted.

New Haven's original 17th-century street layout is known by what name?

The Nine Square Plan set the town out as a three-by-three grid of blocks and left the middle one open as common land, which survives today as the New Haven Green.

Which hurricane toppled the Lincoln Oak on New Haven's Green, exposing a skeleton in its roots?

Hurricane Sandy felled the oak in October 2012; the bones dated from the years when the Green was the town's graveyard, and thousands of bodies still lie beneath it.

Which Native American people lived around New Haven Harbor before the English arrived?

The Quinnipiac sold their land to the settlers in 1638 in return for a pledge of protection from Pequot and Mohawk raids, and the town was first called Quinnipiac before it was renamed in 1640.

Which two men led the Puritans who founded New Haven in 1638?

Minister John Davenport and merchant Theophilus Eaton led the group, seeking a stricter Puritan settlement than Massachusetts; Eaton served as the colony's governor until his death in 1658.

What became of the 'Great Shippe' New Haven sent to England?

It vanished and was never seen again; townspeople later said a phantom of the ship appeared in the sky after a storm, a tale Cotton Mather recorded in 1702.

What is the West Rock formation where two of Charles I's regicides hid in 1661 called?

Judges' Cave sheltered Edward Whalley and William Goffe, who had signed Charles I's death warrant, from the agents of Charles II; every attempt to arrest them failed, and neither was ever returned to England for trial.

Why did Connecticut's legislature quit New Haven in the 1870s?

A statewide vote in 1873 made Hartford the sole capital, ending an arrangement dating from 1701 under which the legislature alternated between the two cities; the idle State House was later demolished.

Yale moved to New Haven in 1716 from which Connecticut town?

Old Saybrook held a deed requiring the Collegiate School to stay, but in 1716 the trustees voted to move after New Haven outbid rival towns to host it, and Saybrook residents took to the streets in protest.

Elihu Yale, whose gift renamed the Collegiate School, was the East India Company's governor at which post on India's eastern coast?

Madras was where Yale ran the East India Company's fort until the company removed him over charges of self-dealing; years later Cotton Mather hinted the college could take his name in return for a gift.

Which New Haven merchant led the city's Foot Guard to demand the powder-house keys in 1775?

Captain Benedict Arnold, five years before his treason, threatened to break into the powder house unless he got the keys, then marched his Foot Guard to Cambridge; the city has marked Powder House Day since 1904.

Which signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution became New Haven's first mayor in 1784?

Roger Sherman was elected in 1784 and three years later brokered the Connecticut Compromise, the deal between large and small states that gave Congress its two differently apportioned chambers.

Which Yale graduate, who earned little from his famous invention, turned to making muskets near New Haven in the 1790s?

Eli Whitney won a federal contract for 10,000 muskets to be delivered in two years, then took more than a decade to finish them at his armory in what is now the Whitneyville section of Hamden.

Whose statue beside New Haven's City Hall commemorates the Amistad captives jailed in the city?

Joseph Cinqué led the 1839 revolt aboard the Amistad; the memorial stands where the captives were jailed before the Supreme Court freed them in 1841, with former president John Quincy Adams arguing their case.

Which gunmaker produced firearms in New Haven until 2006?

Winchester Repeating Arms grew out of a struggling gun company bought by Oliver Winchester, who had come to New Haven to manufacture dress shirts; its rifles were made in the city until the plant closed in 2006.

Which Catholic fraternal organization was founded at St. Mary's Church in New Haven in 1882?

The Knights of Columbus began as a mutual-benefit society: Father Michael McGivney, a priest at St. Mary's, wanted working-class Catholic families insured so that a breadwinner's death would not leave them destitute.

In 1878, the District Telephone Company of New Haven opened the world's first commercial what?

Switchboard exchange: George Coy built the board from carriage bolts, teapot-lid handles and wire, and from January 1878 it connected the company's 21 subscribers through a central operator.

Louis' Lunch on Crown Street is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing what in 1900?

Louis Lassen served a hurried customer a ground-steak patty as a sandwich in 1900, and the Library of Congress credits Louis' Lunch with inventing the hamburger.

Louis' Lunch is famous for refusing customers which condiment?

Ketchup is off the menu at Louis' Lunch, along with every other condiment: the Lassen family says nothing should mask the taste of the meat, so cheese, tomato and onion are the only garnishes allowed.

Louis' Lunch has served its signature sandwich on what since 1900?

Two slices of toasted white bread were what Louis Lassen had at hand when a customer in a rush wanted lunch to go in 1900, and the family has refused to change the recipe since.

New Haven-style pizza is known locally by what name?

Apizza, pronounced 'ah-BEETS', is baked in coal-fired brick ovens with a thin, charred crust; a 'plain' pizza comes with tomato sauce and grated pecorino but no mozzarella.

Which seafood tops the signature 'white pie' of Wooster Street's pizzerias?

Clams, shucked fresh each day, top Pepe's white pie over garlic, olive oil and grated cheese; the original 1925 menu had nothing like it, offering only a tomato pie with or without anchovies.

Frank Pepe left Maiori, on which stretch of Italian shoreline, for New Haven?

The Amalfi Coast town of Maiori was Pepe's birthplace; he reached New Haven as a teenager, went back to fight for Italy in the First World War, then returned and sold his pizzas from a cart before opening his pizzeria in 1925.

Salvatore 'Sally' Consiglio, whose Wooster Street pizzeria became Pepe's great rival, was what relation to Frank Pepe?

His nephew: Sally learned the trade from his uncle, and in 1938 his mother, Pepe's sister Filomena, bought a building with a bread oven on the same street for him to run as a pizzeria.

Unlike its Wooster Street rivals, Modern, the third of New Haven's famous pizzerias, opened in 1934 on which street?

State Street put Modern in the East Rock neighborhood, away from Wooster Square, and its ovens differ too: Modern's brick ovens burn oil, where Pepe's and Sally's burn coal.

The Frisbee takes its name from which product's tins, tossed by Yale students?

Pies from Bridgeport's Frisbie bakery came in tins that students at Yale and other colleges flung for sport; Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter the Frisbee in 1957 after hearing them call a flying disc a 'Frisbie'.

Which construction toy was invented in New Haven by A. C. Gilbert in 1911?

Gilbert's Erector Set, sold from 1913, came to him on a train to New York as he watched workmen rivet steel girders beside the track; he was also a magician and a 1908 Olympic pole-vault gold medalist.

Which US president was born in New Haven while his father was a Yale student?

George W. Bush was born in New Haven on July 6, 1946, while his father was a Yale undergraduate, but he grew up in Midland and Houston and made his political career as a Texan, serving as that state's governor.

Whose 1970 trial drew thousands of protesters to New Haven's Green?

Bobby Seale and other Black Panthers were charged over the 1969 killing of fellow Panther Alex Rackley; Seale's jury deadlocked, and the judge, widely expected to order a retrial, dismissed the charges instead.

Yale political scientist Robert Dahl turned his study of New Haven's politics into which landmark 1961 book?

Who Governs? argued from New Haven's politics that power in American cities is spread among competing groups, a rebuttal of C. Wright Mills and other writers who saw a single small elite in charge.

Which musical had its first public performance, as 'Away We Go!', at New Haven's Shubert Theatre in 1943?

Oklahoma! was still Away We Go! at its New Haven tryout that March, when a Broadway insider famously wrote it off with a quip ending 'no chance'; retitled, it opened on Broadway to raves.

Which Tennessee Williams play opened at New Haven's Shubert in 1947?

A Streetcar Named Desire played the Shubert in 1947 with Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando, one of hundreds of tryouts that made 'bombed in New Haven' Broadway shorthand for a show that stumbled out of town.

Which New Haven museum was founded on a gift of art from the collector Paul Mellon?

The Yale Center for British Art holds the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom; its architect, Louis Kahn, died three years before it opened in 1977.

Which nephew, an early paleontologist, urged George Peabody to found the Peabody Museum in 1866?

Othniel Charles Marsh won his uncle's gift for Yale in 1866, then spent decades in the 'Bone Wars', a bitter rivalry with Edward Drinker Cope in which each raced to dig up and name new dinosaurs before the other.

The bronze Torosaurus outside the Peabody Museum is a close relative of which famous dinosaur?

Triceratops is so close a relative that some paleontologists argued Torosaurus was merely its full-grown form; Yale researchers answered in 2012 that the two are separate dinosaurs.

Grove Street Cemetery's Egyptian Revival gateway carries which inscription?

'The Dead Shall Be Raised', from 1 Corinthians, crowns the gateway Henry Austin designed in 1845; Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley is said to have quipped that they certainly would be, if Yale ever wanted the land.

Which famous Connecticut writer is buried in New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery, among Yale presidents and inventors?

Noah Webster, the dictionary maker, lies in the cemetery New Haven laid out in 1796 after yellow fever epidemics left the old burial ground on the Green too crowded to use.

Wooster Square's annual spring festival celebrates trees of what kind?

Yoshino cherry trees were planted around Wooster Square's park in 1973, and the neighborhood's spring festival grew up to celebrate their bloom, down to the 'pink snow' of falling petals.

Who was David Wooster, the man for whom New Haven's Wooster Square is named?

A Revolutionary War general, David Wooster was badly wounded in 1777 while attacking the rear of a British column that had just burned the army's stores at Danbury, and he died there a few days later.

The cliffs that frame New Haven on east and west are ridges of which hard, dark stone?

Trap rock forms both East Rock and West Rock, left when magma cooled about 200 million years ago; it resists erosion far better than the sandstone around it, so the ridges stayed standing as the softer rock wore away.

What stands on the summit of East Rock, visible for miles?

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, dedicated in 1887, is a 112-foot column topped by an Angel of Peace honoring New Haveners who died in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War.

Which NFL team played its home games at the Yale Bowl in 1973 and 1974?

The New York Giants needed a stand-in home while Yankee Stadium was rebuilt, and New Haven saw little to cheer: they won just one of the twelve regular-season games they played in the Bowl.

Which standard feature has the Yale Bowl lacked ever since it opened in 1914?

Locker rooms were never built into the Bowl, so Yale's players dress in a field house about 200 yards away and march in past cheering fans while the band plays, a ritual known as the Bulldog Walk.

Which New Havener is known as the 'father of American football'?

Walter Camp, raised in New Haven and a Yale player and coach, devised the line of scrimmage and the system of downs in the 1880s; he is buried in Grove Street Cemetery.

Which band played a surprise warm-up club show at Toad's Place on August 12, 1989?

The Rolling Stones had spent six weeks rehearsing at a vacant girls' school in rural Connecticut, then tried the set on 700 fans who paid about $3 each; it was their first American show in eight years.

Which rock singer was arrested mid-concert on the stage of the New Haven Arena in December 1967?

Jim Morrison of the Doors was hauled off after a run-in with a policeman before the show, and the crowd rioted; the band later worked the night into 'Peace Frog', with its line about blood in the streets of New Haven.

Which architect, famed for a New York skyscraper, designed New Haven's Union Station and public library?

Cass Gilbert, famed for the Woolworth Building, saw his Union Station open in 1920 after fire ruined the old depot; it sat closed in the 1970s until federal rail money paid for the restoration that reopened it in 1985.

Charles Dickens supposedly called which New Haven street 'the most beautiful street in America' in 1868?

Hillhouse Avenue, laid out by James Hillhouse in 1792, is lined with 19th-century mansions mostly owned by Yale; the whole avenue is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which church on New Haven's Green is the Gothic Revival one, built for an Episcopal parish?

Trinity Church got its Gothic design from Ithiel Town, the same architect who was building the Federal-style Center Church next door; it is among the earliest Gothic Revival churches in America.

Which airline made Tweed New Haven Airport its first East Coast base in 2021?

Avelo Airlines had made its first scheduled flight just eight days before the deal was announced in May 2021, and its arrival came with a plan for a new terminal on the airport's East Haven side.

Which two clothing brands were founded in New Haven?

Gant and Ann Taylor both began in New Haven: shirtmaker Bernard Gantmacher shortened his own name for the label in 1949, while the dress shop that opened in 1954 was named for nobody, as there never was a real Ann Taylor.

Which holiday's New Haven parade dates back to 1842?

St. Patrick's Day: by the organizers' account, the newly formed Hibernian Provident Society marched behind a band to Mass on March 17, 1842, the start of a parade they rank among New England's oldest.

Unhappy at the New Haven Colony's merger with Connecticut, some of its Puritans left to found which New Jersey city?

Newark was founded in 1666 by Puritans from the old New Haven Colony under Robert Treat, who hoped to rebuild the church-run community they had lost when Connecticut absorbed their towns.

Which city passed New Haven at the 2020 census to become Connecticut's second largest?

Stamford counted 135,470 residents to New Haven's 134,023, overtaking both New Haven and Hartford in a single census and leaving New Haven third in the state behind Bridgeport and Stamford.

Which mayor, in office from 1954, made New Haven a national test case for urban renewal?

Richard C. Lee spent eight terms rebuilding New Haven with state and federal money as a 'Model City', but the clearances cost thousands of mostly poor residents their homes; the federal courthouse now bears his name.

The Farmington Canal and its Massachusetts extension linked New Haven with which city on the Connecticut River?

Northampton was reached in 1835, a decade after digging began, but the canal never paid its way; within about a dozen years a railroad was running along its bed, and much of the route is now a walking and cycling trail.