Amistad Park

The property on which Amistad Park now sits is part of the historic Hill neighborhood. In the earliest days of the New Haven Colony, residents began to build small, frame houses in the area, where local commerce, such as shoemakers, also began to settle. The Hill began to develop in earnest around 1800, and the first subdivision took place in 1812. During the period when the Farmington Canal sparked New Haven’s increasing prosperity and mercantile strength in 1825, the Hill saw a steady increase in housing, which consisted of frame buildings one or two stories high with a gable end on the street. This period of time also marked the completion of the first State Hospital Building.2



The mid-nineteenth century marked the rise of the Hill as a dense and vibrant residential area, which would later explode with people during New Haven’s manufacturing and transportation boom during the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. New streets, such as Prince and Gold Streets—two that border Amistad Park today—began to divide the neighborhood, and increasing numbers of residents settled into tenement houses and apartment buildings [See Figure 1]. Though the Hill previously housed blacks and poor whites, middle class residents began to move into the neighborhood as foreign immigrants settled into the older downtown areas of the city. To meet the demands of the growing population, commerce also increased, as did the number of small neighborhood churches.



The twentieth century eventually brought what city officials saw as the decline of the neighborhood. Motivated to escape the increasing housing density and the newest influx of immigrants, middle-class residents fled to new streetcar suburbs and were replaced by eastern European and Italian immigrants. The number of tenement houses and duplexes increased markedly to accommodate the number of families in the area. What these neighborhoods lost in affluence, they gained in density, local commerce, and diversity. Along the streets bordering the plot where Amistad Park now stands, small businesses that sold everything from meat to dry goods to paint to watches and shoes were mixed in with the great number of residents.3 The blocks, lined with brick and wooden frame buildings, came to resemble the kind of block of which Jane Jacobs would approve [See Figure 2].



After World War II, New Haven engaged in massive urban renewal efforts, receiving the most federal urban renewal funds of any other city in the country. The highway projects of the 1950s and 1960s hastened the flow of affluence out of the city, leading to the expansion of blighted areas. According to the New Haven Historic Resources Inventory, “the scattered pockets of poverty in the Hill area soon spread. Middle class residents moved out and low-income, predominantly minority families moved in. A spiral of disinvestment started. Partly because of the severe density of the neighborhood, buildings deteriorated rapidly.”4 Drug trafficking and prostitution also became prevalent in the area.5 In an effort to revitalize the area and New Haven’s lagging economy and job market, the New Haven Redevelopment Authority adopted the Hill Renewal and Redevelopment Plan [See Figure 3]. Pressured by the city, Hill residents began to leave the neighborhood. Where densely packed apartment complexes stood in 1968, buildings stood vacant by 1970, and by 1980, the entire block of Cedar Street from Prince Street to Washington Avenue was completely cleared [See Figure 4].6



The year 1981, however, marked a shift in urban renewal thinking. City officials and the New Haven Redevelopment Authority began to focus more on rehabilitation than on demolition for the Hill Neighborhood. Also, community groups like the Upper Hill Project Area Committee (UHPAC) began to spring up and unite area residents. 7 In 1987, New Haven and the Schnip Development Corporation applied for up to $10 million in Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which gave money to cities in severe economic distress. Amistad Park was part of the Downtown South-Hill North Project proposal to revitalize a 40-acre site that city officials deemed to be “mostly vacant and blighted.”8 The proposal included plans to develop hundreds of new housing units, some specifically for “low-moderate income occupants, and 1,400,000 square feet of commercial space, including office and medical-related facilities, as well as a hotel, conference center and health club.”9 Schnip intended for the project to complement the Washington Center Project, another revitalization project proposed by minority developer Washington Center Associates.



Amistad Park’s site is part of a larger story of urban development and city planning and the difficulties that come with both. First, due to community opposition and fundraising difficulties, the proposed Washington Center Project was never built and the Downtown South-Hill Project never fully completed. Original plans now obsolete, city officials and Schnip Corporation persuaded the city’s board of aldermen to rezone and revert the parcels within the development property, which had been classified as a Planned Development District (PDD). This reduced the size of the development project and made room for smaller developments, such as the Lulac Daycare center.10



Remnants of the development were completed, such as New Prince Street and its passive park, both of which would later be renamed to celebrate the famed slave revolt on the Amistad ship. Much of the housing and retail space no longer exists or was never built, and Yale now owns many of the properties that would have been included in the Downtown South-Hill North Project. Many of these properties now house research facilities and office space, and the former Richard C. Lee High School— named after the mayor who oversaw much of the city’s urban renewal—became Yale’s School of Nursing. Architect Herb Newman oversaw much of the design, construction and renovation of the Yale buildings, including the construction of the Amistad research building, which came to public attention last year when the murder case involving Annie Le broke headlines. The park itself, went through a number of design iterations, ranging from a pattern of asymmetrical paths like that of the New Haven Green to the design we see today with a center circular lawn. Courtland Wilson, executive director of the Hill Development Corporation justified the park’s role in the development: “We don’t have parks in the Hill where you can sit, like the Green or Edgewood Park. This would fill the void very well.”11 Landscape architects Towers|Gold (formerly Rolland/Towers) drafted the final design in 1991, and construction on the park finished in 1992 [See figure 5]. Today, the park still remains a passive park under Yale’s ownership and the management of CDC, LCC.



The Downtown South-Hill North Project and Amistad Park bring up some really interesting questions regarding the role of planning in economic recovery. The project was initially designed to “provide a substantial number of jobs for the City, including 737 new permanent jobs, some for low- and moderate-income and minority residents, and 315 jobs during the construction period.”12 According to a brief on the proposed disposition of Lee High School, “the Mayor [of New Haven] has believed that this 40-acre area cannot be revitalized unless done comprehensively. For this reason, the Mayor imposed a moratorium on piece-meal development of the area, and in February, 1986, named Schnip as Preferred Developer for Planning for this entire area.”13 The ultimate failure of the comprehensively planned project reveals many of the obstacles in this discourse of urban planning—namely, logistical feasibility, equity, and effectiveness. Also, in looking back at the history of the property as a residential and commercial center, it seems appropriate to wonder whether the neighborhood would have fared better had city officials simply left it as it was.



Amistad Park serves as a constant reminder of the limited number of residents in the area. What the city and Schnip Development Corporation saw as a neighborhood amenity for the diverse community of Hill residents now stands often empty, save for the occasional group of Yale researchers having lunch or Yale Medical School’s annual commencement. In 1992, the quincentennial year of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, Amistad Park officially opened, and officials unveiled a bronze art installation that artist Roger Di Tarando created to commemorate the many cultures that contributed to our nation’s history [See figure 6]. The irony seems all too appropriate: celebrating the many cultures and people that Columbus helped to destroy with a piece that marks the entrance to an empty passive park that was designed for people its construction helped to displace. Today, Amistad Park disguises its rich but troubled past with its carefully manicured and diligently maintained lawn and plantings, hiding any clue about the people and communities who used to live in its place.



1 Rolland/Towers. “Plant List.” Prince St. Relocation & New Park, Project No. 90-151-42. City Plan Commission, New Haven City Hall.



2 New Haven Preservation Trust and Connecticut Historical Commission. “The Hill.” Reprinted 2000. New Haven Historic Resources Inventory, Phase I: Central New Haven. Accessed at the New Haven Historical Museum.



3 New Haven City Directory, Volume LXXIV. 1913. New Haven: Price & Lee Company. Accessed at the New Haven Historical Museum.



4 New Haven Preservation Trust and Connecticut Historical Commission. “The Hill.” Reprinted 2000. New Haven Historic Resources Inventory, Phase I: Central New Haven. Accessed at the New Haven Historical Museum.



5 The City of New Haven. Inside New Haven’s Neighborhoods, Part II. 1982.



6 New Haven City Directories. 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1980. New Haven: Price & Lee Company. Accessed at the New Haven Historical Museum.



7 Inside New Haven’s Neighborhoods.



8 Schnip Development Corporation. “Authorization to apply for Urban Development Action Grant.” 8 July 1987. Folder 1042-9a, City Plan Commission, New Haven City Hall.



9 “Development Agreement between Schnip & City of N.H. including Tax Agreement.” 5 April 1989. Folder 1088- 3, City Plan Commission, New Haven City Hall.



10 City of New Haven. “Authorization to Submit to Board of Aldermen Boundary Amendment to Remove Parcels from the PDD.” 20 January 1993. Folder 1156-04, City Plan Commission, New Haven City Hall.



11 Catherine Sullivan. “3-acre park proposed for the Hill.” 3 July 2991. The New Haven Register. Accessed 4 October 2010. http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb.



12 “Authorization to apply for Urban Development Action Grant.”



13 Schnip Development Corporation. “Approval of sale of Lee High School by Procedures other than by Guidelines for Disposition of Surplus City Bldgs.” 8 July 1987. Folder 1042-9d, City Plan Commission, New Haven City Hall.