The Emerson

The Emerson is a Romanesque Revival apartment building. It was originally built sometime between 1875 and 1885, though some sources date it to 1903. However, it does appear on an 1886 Sanborn map of the area. On the 1886 Sanborn map it is listed as the Kensington Hotel tenement, number 174 Orange Street. The original building was four stories tall with a wood cornice and flat roof, and the lot size was 60.75 feet wide by 142 feet long. There were originally 8 apartment units. This building was one of the first large apartment buildings constructed in the city (some argue it was indeed the first) and the earliest one constructed to serve a non-university population. Its original name, as noted on the State of Connecticut Historical Resources survey, was Kensington Flat. The name is a reference to the great Queen Anne apartments then going up in London's Kensington neighborhood. Though apartment style living was an uncommon phenomenon in New Haven at the time, according to the New Haven City Directory, there were at least 6 occupants prior to World war I, and during the later years of the war, all 8 units were listed as occupied in the New Haven City Directory.