New Haven Industrial Heritage Trails

New Haven has envisioned 5 new Plans for the industrial district of Long Wharfs, there are big vision for Long Wharf, plans are continuing to evolve, Its the talk of the town, and finally these big plans are headed for planning commission!

Long Wharf is located on the Southern edge of New Haven just below Union Avenue and The New Haven Green is just on the top right corner of this image. And you see, there will be this exciting dense new environment where:

• there’s a new public realm for recreation, ethnic diversity
  
• new buildings to define the new waterfront, bistros by the waters
  
• new pedestrian plazas with festivities happening in both the day and night
  
• a new bike oriented landscape

What you can begin to notice is that the sight of a car bares any presence, that this incredibly vibrant and pedestrian oriented landscape, one could probably not imagine that this development sits on what essentially is a product of the automobile itself. The history of this site has reflected and illustrated every major generation of transportation technology since the beginning of the 19th Century.

I want to take us through these layers, to understand the successive stages in New Haven’s history and by extension the transport history of every major industrial city. So let’s begin with the name itself: Long Wharf.

What a wharf symbolized to a nation was maritime prosperity. It was the designated area that allowed for the movement of goods and trade to occur by Vessel at the global scale. The vessels that would dock have voyaged to England, Dublin, Sicily, and in this image you see how active these ports were. But what was needed for this system to work?

Our harbor, unfortunately is very shallow, which meant that these large steam boats could not reach the wharf’s edge or they could not dock for long because of the tide and so in 1810 there was the extension of the Pier that would reach 1,350 feet towards the shore.

And to find this pier, way finding devices had to be created. Taking a closer look at this map you can also see that to guide these vessels there were lighthouses, Buoys, shore depths, surface typology and and descriptive text.

^{New Haven, 1830}

And here you can see that the most prominent feature is the Wharf itself, at this time, it is the most important street in city where Locomotion through water had completely dominated. And with this pier, it was one of the first moments the edge of New Haven began to shift...

_{New Haven, 1849}

Now we have our next transportation infrastructure, the Railroad . This map is of 1849, where New York and New Haven got the approval to cross the wharf, so here we begin to see the shifted access to the waterfront, cut away by the railroad. And over the course of the middle to near end of the 19th century, what was seen by the sinuous line of the railroad crossing the harbour would then spark.

The thickening and expansion with the railroad infrastructure. Seen on the right is a perspective of New Haven in 1879 and you can see that the canal basin has been infilled.

It did this because It needed room to accommodate for the paint shop, the roundhouse, the workshop, the car shop, the car shed all these that were necessary to service the railroad .

Now we see in the 1911 that there is a designated area to become a freight yard and yet again we see another expansion of the edge.

This gives an image of the railroad landscape that truly dominated the site in 1954. Even on the eve of completely retrofitting for the automobile, we see here that New Haven is clearly a railroad city.

In 1938 the Merrit parkway opens and it was Connecticut’s first modern parkway and approximately 10 years later there were plans to create a much more ambitious highway that would connect Connecticut to New York and Boston. These plans for the Connecticut Turnpike would give direct access from downtown New Haven and it would follow the waters edge. The Merrit Parkway existed on the northern edge of the county and this new freeway would thus make it more accessible.

This viaduct did exactly what the railroad did, it crossed the harbour and what better place to create an entirely new automobile oriented industrial district than right next to the highway itself. Here we see another infill which in turn pushed the waters edge to where we know it to be today. And this infill invited for industrial spaces, food and allied lines, Freezer Warehouse, Food terminals.

Here we are in the present, these renders of future development are showcasing the ascendancy of the bike and foot planning to even give the impression that you can arrive at this site by bike or foot when in reality, I was shocked that New Haven even had a waterfront because each successive mode of transportation made it more difficult to reach the waters edge.

I wanted to create a wayfinding map for the pedestrian, as I believe this is the next generation of transportation. I wanted to uncover the layers to explain why it is so difficult to get to the water, to celebrate the transportation infrastructure and highlight the already existing destinations along the waterfront that are just waiting to be activated by the public.

^{1995 Vision Trail}

My path follows the Vision Trail of 1995. This trail was created to connect parts of the city together better and to promote walkers and cyclists to get around and to Long Wharf itself. - The issues they found were that its not a “pretty route” because it passes the rail yard, because you cross the i-95 But I think that these unpleasant views are actually one to celebrate. So my path has 9 destinations,

Starting with the New Haven Green, I think that it is important for there to be a sign to even signify that a waterfront does exist, then we have our first stop, the freight yard. When arriving at point 2, in the early 1800s, one would actually be at the waterfront then. But because of the industrial city, one must continue walking, till they arrive at point 3,. Here, in the early 1900s, one would again be at the waterfront, but because of the infill and the highway, the water is pushed to where it currently exists. At each stop, there is a sign that shows a glimpse of what this edge used to look like and explain why it is so important to New Haven’s History.

This is what it currently looks like and this is what it could look like. I thought that it was important to paint on the ground to make the path more lively, a place designated for the pedestrian and simply tracing the old edge to show that right at this spot is where the water used to be. In the image, you see the foot marks marking the destination. The dashed line is where the edge used to be and the sign above explains why the edge has shifted from this edge.  The experience is that as you travel towards the water, you are simultaneously learning about the shifted landforms over time in relation to each transportation era. And along this map I wanted to recall the existing destinations and activities that the waterfront currently offers such as food truck paradise, the pier itself, Vietnam Veterans Memorial park.