Building of the Day

This two and a half story fourplex apartment building on Edgewood Avenue is a quintessential example of the High Victorian Italianate rowhomes that defined American cities in the early 20^th Century (Image 1). Its twin style construction invokes the perfect symmetry of two separate row homes that appear to be stuck together, providing density while a well preserved and freshly painted wooded porch frames the entrances to four separate living units. The porch and roof trim are thematically linked by an eggshell blue paint which colors the low gabled roof and paired brackets that anchor the cornices (Image 2 and 4). Now sporting a handicapped accessible wheelchair lift and close proximity to the next-door rainbow park, the elegant 64 Edgewood has served generations of tenants in the Dwight neighborhood of New Haven since its construction in 1910 (2). 

The Italianate detailing in this twin row home exemplifies the idiosyncratic aesthetics of architects in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (1). While its rectangular brick and wood construction appears relatively tame to the observer, its curved brick windows, lattice porch wood decorations, curved double corbel roof supports and double arched porch entrance invokes the Old World charm of English Italianate architecture. The porch serves as a decorative façade for the relatively plain brick building behind it, jutting out two feet beyond the house itself. The porches relatively intricate decorative works reflects the pastiche foreign architecture by architects like Henry Austin (1). Similar to the Willis Bristol House just around the corner at 584 Chapel Street, 64 Edgewood combines elements of Italianate detailing (itself a British caricature of “real” Italian architecture) and the Moorish supports in the wooden turned posts (Image 3), in its current flashy yet subtle burnt red accent color.

Even the symmetry of the double row house design seems to invoke an ideal of urban harmony. Everything in this house can be divided by two from the two perfectly symmetrical front facing attic windows, the four symmetrical chimneys jutting from the slightly hipped roof and even the double roof cornices that support a horizontal frieze that circumnavigates the building. 

The lot that now contains the fourplex at 64 Edgewood was developed at the height of the American street car city. In fact, the 1888 Atlas of New Haven reveals that horse stables once existed in the very place where apartment now stands (3). The road was known as Martin Street at that time, as Edgewood Avenue would only be named such once the plans for Edgewood Park by Fredrick Law Olmstead came about in 1910 (4). 1910 also marks the year the building was constructed, although some have placed the date earlier in year c. 1895 (5). A street car line trundles down Edgewood in the 1911 Atlas of New Haven, perhaps designed as an infrastructural auxiliary to the park, perhaps constructed by coincidence (6). In any case, by the time the extant building makes an appearance in the 1911 Atlas, elements of Beaux Arts urban planning had been implemented. This is shown in the grassy median between streetcar lines further down Edgewood Avenue (6). By the time of the 1911 Atlas, the horse stables had been demolished and the housing density of the neighborhood began to increase dramatically (6).

In 1911, the building was owned and operated by Charles M. Fabrique, a graduate of Yale College in 1842 (7) and an active member of the New Haven Free Mason Societies(8). While there is no proof that the Fabrique family owned the lot prior to 1911 or facilitated the building’s construction, evidence would point to such a conclusion as the building was constructed in 1910 and is known to be owned by Charles Fabrique in the 1911 Atlas of New Haven (6).  

It is not certain why the Fabrique family would be interested in a large real estate investment in the Dwight neighborhood, especially considering a 1906 obituary for Charles’s wife Caroline Fabrique confirms that the family lived in a private home located at 20 Stanley street, but it is easy to speculate(9). It was most likely an attempt to capitalize on the booming desirability of the Dwight Neighborhood in response to the construction of Edgewood park and the corresponding street car lines. These urban developments, like those all across American in the early 20^th Century transformed streets like this section of Edgewood and all of Whalley Ave into the commercial corridors we have today. As outlined by Yale School of Architecture Professor Elihu Rubin, urban infrastructure development of parks and transit lines and real estate speculation are inextricably linked(1). In fact, the lightning quick development of the lot in the same year that plans for Edgewood Park were revealed beg the question as to how much stake the Fabrique family had in Olmstead’s design. Did they, like those in New York’s Uptown neighborhoods, advocate for the construction of the park and street car lines to increase the value of their investments? Answering questions like these can be difficult, but can give us insight into the powers that determine and shape our cities for years to come.

The history of 64 Edgewood gets rather murky moving on from the Fabrique family. Without Atlases that denote the owners of the buildings, maps like those of the Sanborn Insurance Company tells us relatively little except that the building has not been demolished or altered significantly. In the mid-20^th Century, the Dwight Neighborhood experienced a wave of African American transplants from the south and with it, a wave of white flight from the neighborhood (10). With current trends now shifting white people back into urban cores and with the increased presence of Yale development and student tenants, the neighborhood appears to be on the cusp of another demographic shift (11).