New Haven Industrial Heritage Trails

The Historic Farmington Canal, traversing from Northampton, MA all the way to New Haven, CT, was a spine of industrial promise and connectivity which traversed the rolling landscape of New England, bringing untold industrial promise in its wake. In downtown New Haven along Audubon St, one can find the remants of one such industrial epicenter formed around the presence of the canal, later transformed into a railroad. The McLagon Foundry and adjacent Andrew B. Hendryx Company constituted two industrial superpowers that contributed not only to the city’s growing urbanity, but also its loudening soundscape.

Post-industrial cities experiencing the strains of increased urban density at the turn of the century encountered not only issues with visual and environmental pollution in conjunction with manufacturing and early zoning orders, but also the issue of sound. While often overlooked, sonic pollution at the turn of the 20th century represented a major concern for urban planners across the US, spawning a flurry of inventive solutions to combat this growing modern nuisance. For example, New York’s Grand Central Station, in collaboration with Wallace Sabine (often referred to as the grandfather of modern acoustics), as well as Catalan builder Rafael Guastavino, invented an absorptive tile to clad the interior vaults of many of New York’s subterranean station platforms. Likewise, in Philadelphia, the PSFS building, reprsenting the forefront of streamline moderne office design, incorporated a number of state of the art acoustic inventions to isolate the noise of a bustling city from the productive silence of the office space within. This included Acoustical Ceiling Tiles (ACT), absorptive partition walls, and asbestos. Each of these solutions offered ways to isolate and exclude the exterior urban landscape, thus reflecting a shift in modern conception of optimal interior space. They represent a period of American history in which absolute silence was considered a direct symbol of modernization, and a luxury that only the most forward thinking designers and planners could provide

The following design offers a proposal for signage in the park behind 33 Whitney Ave. which would serve as both a marker for the historic industrial infrastructure that once surrounded the adjacent Farmington Canal, as well as a reminder of the impact and legacy that these industries have had on the American urban soundscape. Paying homage to the elaborate Hendryx Co. ‘Japanned cages’ of the company’s 1910 catalog, each cage would offer information about a particular industry that once lined this portion of the Farmington Canal along Audubon St. through translucent imagery as well as online material resources, accessible through a scannable QR code. The code would also allow visitors to listen to the bird calls of some of the most popular birds in American households at the turn of the century, namely the Canary, Nightengale, Cockateil, and Swallow.

As seen in the various advertising materials below, the Hendryx Company cleverly positioned themselves as a genuine solution to the growing urban noise crisis afflicting residences across growing American industrial cities such as New Haven. Through catalogs and posters, the company boldly proclaimed its solution through birdsong. One advertisement quoted, “Who am I? I am the living symbol of joy and love, singing my way into the hearts of people everywhere. I am a silver tounged, winged minstrel. I triumph over gloom. I am a feathered philosopher, softening the drab moments of life with the courage of my song. I am your pet canary.”

Today, downtown New Haven offers a range of sights, smells, and sounds, as one wanders its historic streetscape. Consider the sounds of the city and the influence of New Haven’s historic industries on our city’s urban soundscapes as you traverse Audubon St. Park.