Puente La Reina (or Queen’s Bridge) is a small town in the Navarre region of Spain.  This town of 2500 inhabitants sits on the bank of the Arga River, which is crossed by a romanesque bridge dating to the eleventh century.  Every pilgrim making the journey to Santiago de Compostela, whether they come on the Camino Navarro from France or from the Mediterranean seacoast via the Camino Aragonés, must cross this bridge in order to continue on the westward journey across northern Spain.  For Puente La Reina is the place where the divergent roads leading to Santiago from points north and east in Europe converge; after crossing this bridge there is but one road to Santiago.

        I am standing at the Post Road equivalent of Puente La Reina, New Haven Green.  Whether you travel via Springfield, Providence, or points in between, all roads converge here in New Haven. From this point forward there is but one road to New York.  While there may be small detours here and there that resulted from changes in the road over time, the route is solitary and indisputable--the Post Road leaves New Haven and traverses approximately eighty-eight miles through the coastal towns of New Haven and Fairfield County, meanders through the coastal towns of Westchester County in New York, cuts across the Bronx and, at Spuyten Duyvil, heads over the Kingsbridge to reach the northern extreme of Manhattan.  The road then follows a winding path for fourteen miles south through the island until it reaches the tip of Manhattan near Bowling Green.

        I chose to follow the southern, or lower, Post Road for reasons I have given many times throughout my journey, but principally because the travelers whose diaries I read that were of interest to me all traveled some variation of the southern road through Rhode Island and along the coast of Connecticut.  Some other reasons include the fact that this road was where the major centers of population were located throughout the colonial era, these were the places where many of the initial settlements by Europeans were begun, and I have an affinity for marine vistas in preference to wooded scenes.  Finally, the five milestone that Paul Dudley placed in Jamaica Plain near my house is on the Dedham Road which is the name of the road to Dedham, Providence, New London, and New Haven via the southern route as it leaves Boston (it would sound strange to call the Boston Post Road “Boston Post Road” in Boston).  Had I lived in Allston or Cambridge or Sudbury I might have chosen the other road but I didn’t. I chose the path I have taken and that has made all the difference.

        To the various threads of the Post Road that finally converge into one strand here in New Haven must also be added the changes wrought by the growth and development of New Haven over nearly four centuries starting with the  settlement at the mouth of the Quinnipiac by John Davenport and other Puritan renegades who rejected the Massachusetts Bay Colony in favor of the establishment of a more rigidly theological community. I alluded to changes in the route into New Haven from the east in the previous entry. In this entry I will reexamine the various routes that were followed over the course of the two centuries of settlement leading up to the establishment of the railroad as the primary means of travel in the nineteenth century.  This will also give me an opportunity to explore some of the sites of New Haven and the result will be similar to the entries I previously did on Providence and Newport, two other cities that, owing to their importance to the history of the road, I felt deserved their own entry.

*****

       

         May 11, 1665 was a bad day for the founders of the New Haven Colony, for on this day the colony was merged into the Connecticut Colony, and the role of religion was subsumed to that of property ownership in the granting of the franchise; however New Haven was on the ocean, unlike Hartford, and so even by the time of the merger New Haven was the largest and most important town in the colony. In 1670 New Haven had a population of 875, and by 1774 the town remained the largest in Connecticut with a population of 8,295 (a tenfold increase in a century!).  New Haven citizens also contributed the most taxes to the colony coffers, an indication of the wealth of the town and its importance as a commercial center.

        The original town was made up of a grid plan of nine squares, like the boxes for a game of tic-tac-toe, which even today forms the core of the center of New Haven. Sitting in the center box is the Green, on which are situated some of the most important early churches.  To the north and west the squares are occupied by the buildings of Yale University, the largest employer in the city today. To the northeast and east are government and financial buildings, such as New Haven City Hall and various banks. To the south is the commercial center of New Haven. Chapel Street leading east is the route I followed yesterday, and it passes through what was once the heart of downtown, but today is sadly somewhat bereft of atmosphere.  Chapel Street to the west passes the southern edge of the Yale campus and is significantly more active, with cafes, bookstores, lots of restaurants and museums and shops.  I spend my time in New Haven in the creaky but evocative Hotel Duncan along this stretch of Chapel Street, with its old-fashioned elevator and elegant but faded foyer. This seems an appropriate metaphor for the city of New Haven, but in fact the city is quite lively albeit nowhere near as important as it was when it was the junction of the post roads, the commercial capital, and even co-political capital of Connecticut, when Yale College was a rebellious upstart created by ministers seeking to hew more closely to the orthodox Puritan theology that Harvard was thought to be abandoning, when Eli Whitney was developing the cotton gin which would revolutionize the textile industry in America, and help propel the northern states into the forefront of the industrial revolution. 

        Yale remains vital to the fortunes of the city as one of the most important universities in the world.  The core campus is a nineteenth-century mock-up of a Gothic European university, which gives the campus an architectural harmony that is lacking at its less disciplined cousin at Cambridge, although there are many who think the authenticity of the architectural development at Harvard is more aesthetically pleasing than a planned campus. (I remain neutral, not wishing to offend my host city or insult my home town university.) 

        Yet this need to rebuild and redevelop has bedeviled New Haven as well. The most obvious example of the perils of redevelopment are found by taking a walk in virtually any direction away from the center. In particular, the historic entrances to the city are somewhat disappointing approaches to modern New Haven. Take the Ferry Street Bridge which I crossed yesterday; to reach the center from the southeast corner of the Fair Haven neighborhood requires a walk through a somewhat desolate and barren cityscape, followed by a walk under Interstate 91 which passes very close to the center of the city, and finally crossing over the railroad tracks. It is not fun, save for the short stretch of Wooster Square, which feels cut off and isolated from the rest of the city, bounded by I-91 on the east, the train tracks and the bordering empty space to the north and west, and Interstate 95 and the industrial harbor front to the south.  Similarly, the historic State Street entrance from the north crossed a bridge at the Mill River. Today Interstate 91 parallels State Street and then passes directly over the bridge, which, in the event, is closed for repair and impassable.

        Perhaps the prize for most dispiriting entrance to New Haven traveling from Boston is the site of the Tomlinson Bridge, since the early nineteenth century the most important gateway to the city. Today it remains the most important entrance, but the old bridge has been replaced by the hulking eyesore that is the Interstate 95-Interstate 91 junction, barely a ten minute walk from the lovely Green. To reach this monstrosity one must pass through an area of blight created by the destruction of many old commercial buildings in the twentieth century to create what is called the Oak Street Connector. Walking through this urban wasteland is one of the single most dispiriting sections of the Post Road I have traversed; empty spaces intersected by highways and high speed through-roads, a post-industrial wasteland to match any I have seen on this journey.  The streets formerly used to reach the bridge are essentially gone--Fair Street is bisected by the highways and train tracks, Water Street is now US 1 and runs parallel to the highway to the river where it becomes Forbes Avenue as it crosses the river on a large modern drawbridge.  Bridge Street existed until recently and is still on maps, but it has become the victim of yet another public works project involving the reconstruction of I-95. Had I tried this walk in the evening I am sure I would not have walked one hundred yards before turning around, but at least I would not have had to look at it in the dark.

        To me the fact that Interstate 95 barrels through the center of New Haven is symbolic of what the Interstate has done to the older cities of the northeast; rather than revitalize them it has allowed people to leave more quickly or worse to pass through without stopping. Knight, Birket, Hamilton, and others all stopped in New Haven for a significant period of time owing to its importance as a junction of major roads and as a place of significance between Boston and New York. Many people today traveling between theses two big cities never even think of stopping off in what was once perhaps the most important stopover on the road. 

*****

            Hugh Finlay, Official Surveyor of the Post Roads, kept a diary of his travels in 1773 and 1774, which describes the state of the roads and the time the postal riders needed to traverse the distances between post offices. New Haven, not surprisingly, was one of the most important offices, and thus Finlay spent two nights (November 12th and 13th, 1773) in “this large flourishing Sea Port town.” (2) As I have mentioned in previous entries, the post office was often a tavern, in this case that of Christopher Kilby, also listed in Nathaniel Low’s 1775 almanac, along with the aptly named Beer’s Tavern (or sometimes Bear’s, so presumably pronounced like the mammal and not the beverage). Finlay specifically describes his entrance into New Haven: “The road is very good. The ferry at New Haven, or rather two miles from it, is about 100 yards wide and is pretty well attended; from the ferry the road to town is good.” (3)  It is apparent from this statement that the ferry at what became the site of Tomlinson’s Bridge was not yet in use as a primary means of entry into New Haven because the distance from one side to the other at that spot on the Quinnipiac is significantly more than 100 yards. 

            James Birket also gives a clear description of his entrance into New Haven: “ 3 miles from which we crossed a Small ferry and a mile from that nearer Newhaven we Cross a pretty river by a Long wooden Bridge where the tide flows above it considerably. Here we join the upper Road from Boston that runs through the Country at a considerable distance from the Sea & comes through Hartford, Wallingford &Ca.” (4) Hamilton also describes crossing “New Haven Ferry betwixt 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon.  This is a pleasant navigable river that runs thro a spacious green plain into the Sound.” (5) Or at least it used to--the scenery from the river today can best be described as “urban industrial wasteland chic.”

        There are references to many different taverns in New Haven, another sign of the size and importance of the town in the colonial era. In addition to the aforementioned Kilby and Beer, Birket stopped at a tavern run by “one McNeal an Irishman who keeps a tollerable good house Compared with what you meet with in common.” Bicknell in 1697 lists the tavern stop in New Haven as belonging to a John Mills, but this was a half century before Hamilton and Birket, and Sarah Knight (more by her in a moment) stayed with relatives.  Hamilton stayed at the tavern of one “Monson’s att the Sign of the Half Moon,” which the editor of Hamilton’s journal Carl Bridenbaugh notes is one of four taverns shown on Wadsworth’s Map of New Haven,1748. (6)  Indeed the inns run by Peck, Mix, Cook, and Munson are all shown on the map (perhaps Mr. McNeal’s establishment changed hands).  The Wadsworth map is extraordinarily detailed, although it is restricted to the area immediately adjacent to the Nine Squares and thus does not elucidate the entrances to the town with any clarity. On the other hand, the accuracy of the map allows me to track down the exact location of Monson (Munson’s) Inn, which is shown below.

*****

        The very helpful and knowledgeable curator at the New Haven Museum, James Campbell, informs me that he believes the site of Beer’s to be on Chapel near the corner of College. If this is so, it is likely that Cooks’s on the map became Beer’s. Rollin Osterweis, in Three Centuries of New Haven, states that in 1701 “the General Court met at Miles’s Tavern, located on the site of the present Taft Hotel,” which means that Bicknell’s Mills Tavern and the Cook/Beer’s Tavern are probably one and the same. (7)  Today it is almost exactly on the spot of a great bar called Richter’s, which was once theTap Room of the Taft Hotel, now an apartment building. The Taft Hotel was built on the site of the New Haven Hotel, in 1852, and who knows what preexisted that structure. One thing is sure though, that drinking has been an established part of that site for the better part of three centuries.  A drink in the friendly atmospheric old bar is a fitting way to end a day of walking and researching the post road in New Haven.

        Not all the walking today was pleasant, but there are many facets to a city as old as New Haven, and I spend the rest of the day and the next sampling the more interesting sites in New Haven. I stroll through the Yale campus, wander around some of the nicer neighborhoods, and visit the museums (the New Haven Museum has a real cotton gin!) and bookstores of the city. I also try two of the three famous pizzerias in New Haven (Sally’s is closed on the Mondays and does not open until the evening on the next day, by which time I was pizza’d out--Maybe next time).  Frank Pepe’s is close enough to the old road to Tomlinson’s Bridge to count as part of the Post Road in my book, so I include it here.  I wait in a long line of gregarious New Yorkers, Nutmeggers, and Bay Staters for a table in the venerable establishment, where I order my pizza “white,” that is with no tomato sauce but rather clams and garlic.  The pizza is delicious and the crust is crispy and chewy at the same time. Later I visit Modern Apizza (apparently pronounced “A-BEETS”) on State Street.  Although not as atmospheric as Frank Pepe’s, the crowd is friendly and fun just like the one at Pepe’s, and the pizza, this time a “normal” pepperoni pizza is also excellent.  I have to give the nod to Modern. I like the crust even more on this pizza, but I am willing to try Pepe’s again, and give Sally’s a go as well.

*****

        Sarah Kemble Knight spent more than two months in New Haven before departing for New York, but spends little time describing the town.  Instead she spends not a few lines describing the people and habits of Connecticut in her usual cantankerous manner.  Of the famed religious orthodoxy of the New Haven Colony, Knight remarks they “were formerly in their zeal very riggid in their administration towards such as their lawes made offenders, even to a harmless kiss or innocent merriment among young people.” (8) The less said about her comments on blacks and Indians the better. Let’s just say she uses words like ‘hoof’ and ‘savage’ in her descriptions and thinks that the people of Connecticut are “too Indulgent to their slaves.”

        Hamilton too was critical in his diary entries of New Haven, complaining “there is but little good liquor to be had in the publick houses,” and of Yale College: “it is not so good a building as that att Cambridge,” while he found New Haven to be “a pritty large, scattered town laid out in squares, much in the same manner as Philadelphia, but the houses are sparse and thin sowed.”

          Birket on the other hand was more generous in his opinion of New Haven, noting the importance of Yale College and preferring the book collection of the “very pretty library” at Yale to that of Harvard, praising the advantages of the town’s location as a seaport as well as noting that it was the co-capital of the province and the important junction of  “the great highroad that runs through North America and which divides about two miles to the Eastward as mentioned above.”  But he too commented that the as town was “only built here and there, it looks very indifferently.” Alas Birket’s comments ring true to this day: the massive trauma the city endured as a result of “redevelopment” engendered by the creation of the Interstate has left massive scars that mar the often sublimely beautiful architecture of many of its neighborhoods. The concomitant decline of the city as an important commercial and industrial center was in some part hastened by the construction of the highway. Thus it seems fair to say that the Post Road helped make New Haven and the Interstate helped break New Haven. Perhaps if the leaders of New Haven had eschewed the opportunity to build the interstate through the center of the city, to have “taken the road less travelled,” it might have made all the difference.