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May is Preservation Month!
What began in 1973 as National Preservation Week is now celebrated every May as Preservation Month. Throughout the month, local non-profits, historic societies, and civic organizations around the country will celebrate with events that promote historic places and heritage tourism and demonstrate the social and economic benefits of historic preservation.
The New Haven Preservation Trust works year-round to protect our collective historic and cultural heritage and the built environment that encompasses it. This month, we will be sharing architecture and sites throughout the city focusing on different building materials. Last week we examined the use of stone, highlighting the earliest surviving house and church built in this material in New Haven. This week, we will look at wooden construction and the different ways this local material was transformed by builders over time.
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Wood logs – Wigwams
The Quinnipiac, a coastal Algonquian tribe and native inhabitants of the area, built domed shelters known as wigwams using tree trunks, specifically long, thin, and flexible saplings. Indigenous builders, who were often women, first bent these cut saplings into parallel arches and set into the ground, and then encircled horizontally by another set of saplings. Once tied together, builders then weatherproofed them using tree bark and other materials.
Ezra Stiles, later president of Yale College, noted in 1761 that forty years earlier one could still see some twenty wigwams in East Haven (Mioonhktuck), where the Quinnipiac settled in 1638 after ceding land by the river to the Puritans, who would shortly afterward establish there the town of New Haven. In the same year, he described and drew two surviving examples in Niantic. Owned by Phebe and Elizabeth Moheege and George Wawkeet, these oval structures were composed of 20 to 30 overlapping wooden poles, covered with mats, each with two doors and a central smokehole. The larger structure, measuring 17.5 x 12 x 10 feet, could accommodate a dozen people, and featured a raised platform with beds and furniture placed atop an earthen floor.
Early English settlers were amazed at the warmth of wigwams in the winter. Yet rather than imitating these structures, they instead built dwellings using split wooden logs, set horizontally, with gaps filled with earth or clay. The first meeting house of New Haven, built in 1639 as the centerpiece of John Davenport’s vision of a “New Jerusalem,” was also constructed in this manner.
Reconstructed examples of wigwams can be seen in Connecticut at the Institute for American Studies in Washington, Tantaquidgeon Museum in Uncasville, Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Ledyard, and the Simsbury Historical Society (pictured here).
Image Credits: Karin Krochmal; Yale University, Beinecke Library, Ezra Stiles Papers
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Wood Siding – 32 Walnut Street (1835)
Wood siding has been popular for centuries. Houses were typically built using local materials and in the United States, wood was abundant and used to make wood clapboard siding. New Haven has a plethora of wood-sided homes dating all the way back to the 1600s. However, over time the original wood siding of many buildings have been replaced or covered by materials that are cheaper or seen as more durable such as vinyl siding or composite material sidings. The Trust always recommends repair instead of replacement and there are many skilled contractors than restore original wood siding!
Simeon Jocelyn (1799–1879) was an abolitionist and social reformer. He was the first pastor of a Black church, the United African Society (now the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ) and advocated for human freedom including trying to form a college for black students in 1831, formed a committee to help the captives from the Amistad ship, and is said to have been involved with the Underground Railroad.
Jocelyn was also one of the biggest real estate speculators in New Haven in the 19th century. He purchased land and laid out streets in an area he named Spireworth, now the neighborhood of Trowbridge Square, to create a model working-class community. In 1835, he purchased a large tract of land between Grand Avenue, State Street, Hamilton Street, and Mill Street to create modest houses for tradesmen and artisans, an area now known as Jocelyn Square. 32 Walnut Street is one of the few remaining houses from Joceyln’s original neighborhood. It is a small 2-½-story Greek Revival house with pedimented gable and fluted entrance columns. Like most Greek Revivals, this building was once wood clapboard but has since been covered in vinyl siding.
Image Credits: Jean Pogwizd
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Wood Shingles – 409 Ellsworth Avenue (1920)
Wood shingles were a popular material used in the eclectic and ornamental Queen Anne style (1880–1910), which often incorporated patterned wood shingles. The Shingle style of domestic architecture, which is less decorative than Queen Anne, was popularized by architects H.H. Richardson and McKim, Mead, and White, and can be seen in New Haven in several examples, including the Atwater House (321 Whitney Ave.), Henee House (703 Whitney Ave.), and Trowbridge House (100 Edgehill Rd.)
Vito Zichichi (1876–1951) immigrated to New Haven and worked as a joiner by trade. He later worked in real estate development, building five houses on Blake Street in 1915 that he sold for profit. The Queen Anne/transitional Colonial Revival building at 409 Ellsworth Avenue was built by Zichichi to resell. It is an elaborate two-family shingled house with intricate details, delicate carpentry details, and leaded glass windows.
Image Credits: Jean Pogwizd
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Please become a member of New Haven Preservation Trust today to help support our work. Join like-minded people, who believe that advocacy, education, and collaboration can make a difference in New Haven. Join Now
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NHPT receives support from the State Historic Preservation Office
of the Department of Economic and Community Development
with funds from the Community Investment Act of the State of Connecticut.
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