The Dinmore (+Orleton Court and Eton Hall)

Standing distinct from other residential housing units, this four-storied brick apartment complex is comprised of three interconnected building units called the Dinmore, Orleton Court, Eton Hall, respectively. On the corner of Park Street and Edgewood Ave, the V-shaped building features neoclassical influenced ornament within the brick, street-facing facade, protruding bay window columns segmented by floor, and a converted flat roof from its original shed roof (11). The centrally located, campus apartments border Yale University’s Davenport and Pierson Colleges, walking distance from the main shopping and restaurant districts in New Haven. 

George T. Newhall's Carriage Company, Apartment and Realty Company, Elm Campus Partners. Variety of individuals renting from realty companies throughout the 20th century, most being Yale Undergraduate students.

The 1824 gridded map of New Haven shows that Park St. and Edgewood Ave. (formerly Martin St.) had yet to be paved through the grid square created by Elm Street, York Street, Howe Street, and Chapel Street (2). On the included 1824 New Haven map, the red star marks the approximated location of where the apartment complex at 228 Park Street would eventually be built (2). Before the complex at 224-228 Park and 8-10 Edgewood was constructed in 1910, the property housed the George T. Newhall Carriage Company for most of the 19th century. The Sanborn map of 1886 illustrates the presence of Newhall’s company on the corner of Park Street and Edgewood Street (5). The factories were later destroyed after Newhall’s company relocated to new property further away from the center of New Haven, apparent in the 1901 Sanborn map (6). Cassius Kelly’s 1911 Atlas of New Haven is the first archival resource that depicts the Dinmore-Orleton Court-Eton Hall apartment complex as it exists today on the commercially zoned property (4, 10). Both the 1924 and 1973 Sanborn maps solidify that the apartment complex has remained the same standing on the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Park Street for the last hundred years even though management and occupation has shifted (7,8). 

The present-day site of the Dinmore-Orleton Court-Eton Hall building was not always home to an apartment complex. The lot has always functioned as a commercially zoned property ever since Park Street and Martin Street (Edgewood Ave.) were paved through the original Chapel-Howe-Elm-York Street grid during the mid-19^th century. Before the commercial apartment complex seen today, the property housed George T. Newhall’s Carriage Company and factory from the 1840s until the turn of the 20^th century.

George T. Newhall was one of the leaders in the manufacturing of carriages in New Haven. Newhall learned the art of carriage making at another factory called Hooker and Osborne, which was also once located further down on Park Street (9). He started his own business down the street shortly after at 228 Park Street and continued working in the carriage business for over forty years. Newhall soon observed the used of steam power while visiting other carriage factories in Providence, RI and revolutionized the New Haven carriage industry by introducing the technology in the late 19th century (1). Steam power was a more cost-effective and productive way to power the machines involved in constructing the carriages (1). Four other privately owned carriage companies surrounded Newall’s factory on the corner of Park Street and Martin Street (Edgewood Ave. today) as seen in the Sanborn Map illustrations from 1886 (5). In the late 19^th century, Park Street boomed with industrial companies involved in the carriage production business. Newhall later purchased an old mill on the Farmington Cancel and moved his business away from the central urban space of New Haven (9). He eventually relocated his entire business completely north of the original factory property to an area eventually deemed “Newhallville,” in honor of the prominent businessman (9). Significant population growth during the 1890s and a large influx of European immigrants caused most factories and industrial business to be pushed farther away from the central nine square grid of the original New Haven town layout. In 1880, when Newhall’s carriage company still operated at 228 Park St, there were around sixty thousand residents in New Haven, but by 1890, the population had already increased to eighty thousand (1). After the demolition of the Park Street factory in 1900, no other building inhabited the site before the 1910 construction of the apartment complex (6). The year 1900 also saw record numbers of New Haven residents as the population surpassed a hundred thousand citizens (1).

In the period from 1870 to 1930, private entrepreneurs built nearly two hundred apartments in New Haven (1). Built in 1910, 228 Park St. represents one of these apartment complexes. At the time the Dinmore was constructed in 1910, the Civic Improvement Report from that very same year disclosed that there were 133,605 residents of New Haven (1).  Although the construction of new apartment buildings does not directly translate from steep population growth, these densely populated urban areas soon required more housing for citizen, especially the booming undergraduate population of Yale University (1). A large pattern toward off-campus living between 1887-1899 lead to an increase in the construction of high end multiple dwelling buildings that catered to undergraduates with proximity to campus life and University buildings (1). At the turn of the century, there was also an increase in the prevalence of real estate developers and construction companies in New Haven (1). The Orleton Court Apartment and Realty Company, one of many privately owned realty companies, purchased the site between in the first years of the 20^th century and eventually constructed the apartment complex as it stands today in 1910 (1). No architect exists in record (1).

After 1900, the ownership of the Orleton Court-Dinmore-Eton Hall complex always has fallen into the hands of privately owned realty companies. The apartments have been rented to a variety of Yale University undergraduate students over the years who represent “the perfect renter pool for nigh-end multiple dwellings” (1). According to current tenant records, the nine apartments that are part of the Dinmore building house a variety of individuals and groups of undergraduates, most of whom attend Yale University. Elm Campus Partners LLC, a Yale-owned property management company founded in 2002, now owns the property and rents out the individual apartments on an annual basis (3).

The flat brick facade of 228 Park St. connects to two other buildings, which form a larger V-shaped apartment complex. The entire complex has two designated addresses: 224-228 Park St. and 8-10 Edgewood Ave (3). Resting in a densely populated district, the apartment complex is the only brick building among five other residential housing units on the street. Today, the building provides residential off-campus housing for mostly undergraduate students of Yale University with its convenient location and proximity to the main university facilities (3). The east side of Park Street is completely taken up by two of Yale’s Residential Colleges and other arts-affiliated University-owned buildings. In contrast, the west side of Park Street accommodates many apartment and residential units somewhat smaller than 228 Park Street along with St. Thomas Moore, one of the main Catholic Churches in New Haven, and three commercially zoned restaurants properties: Dunkin Donuts, Tarry Lodge, and Box63 Bar and Grill.

On the corner of Park Street and Edgewood Ave, a four-story brick apartment complex sits near the street facing sides of the property. The entire exterior façade features intricate brick masonry, which illustrates an influence of Colonial/Gorgonian architecture in the material construction. However, the design of the building references classical architecture through the symmetricity of the building’s windows and the tiered molding along the flat roof. The molding ornament at the edge of the roof resembles that of a Doric column capital. According to National Historical Records, the description of the buildings originally featured a shed roof, but the building underwent renovations resulting in the flat roof seen today (11). Records of the renovation were not accessible. The bricks on the building’s exterior are laid horizontally for most of the facade, except in cases where they are used to emulate neoclassical arches around the building’s many windows. These abstracted windows are squared instead of arched, but the architect highlights the place of the keystone by coloring it white above the window frame, which clearly references Romanesque archways and neoclassical architecture. The brick façade falls flat on the streetscape apart from the four window bays, which create a large, column-like protrusion to the right of the Dinmore doorway. This protrusion allows an expansion of interior apartment space and the possibility of more light from the windows. On the façade facing Park Street, the Dinmore doorway is off-set to the left lower side of the building. It emulates a post and lintel archway with carved fluting like that seen in an Ionic column. The gray concrete of the door frame juxtaposes the entrance to the Dinmore apartment building against the rest of the red brick façade. In comparison, the Edgewood exterior of the building mirrors that of the Dinmore side with the addition of a terra cotta frieze relief of bundled acanthus leaves (11). The rear exterior facing away from the street features three different partially enclosed porch stairwells. These wood framed stairwells are completely attached to the apartment complex. 

1.    Liu, Emily, "The Creation of Urban Homes: Apartment Buildings in New Haven, 1890-1930" (2006). Student Legal History Papers, 35, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/student_legal_history_papers/35.

2.    Dolittle, Amos. Plan of New Haven. Map. New Haven, CT: A. Dolittle, 1824.

https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4202561.

3.    Elm Campus Partners. "224-228 Park Street, 8-10 Edgewood Avenue." Elm Campus Partners. Last modified 2016. http://www.elmcampus.com/apartments/Park/224-228park.

4.    Kelly, Cassius W. Atlas of New Haven, Connecticut. Map. Boston, MA: O.W. Walker,

1911. G1244 N48 K45 1911. Manuscripts and Archives. Yale University Sterling Memorial Library, New Haven, CT.

5.    Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn-Perris Map Co. Sanborn (Firm). “Sanborn Fire

Insurance Maps.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Library Digital Collections, 1886.

6.    Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn-Perris Map Co. Sanborn (Firm). “Sanborn Fire

Insurance Maps.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Library Digital Collections, 1901.

7.    Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn-Perris Map Co. Sanborn (Firm). “Sanborn Fire

Insurance Maps.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Library Digital Collections, 1924.

8.    Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn-Perris Map Co. Sanborn (Firm). “Sanborn Fire

Insurance Maps.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Library Digital Collections,

1973.

9.    Smith, Carolyn C. “Newhallville: A Neighborhood of Changing Prosperity.” Yale-New

Haven Teacher’s Institute. http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1989/1/89.01.14.x.html.

10. Urban Studies Program at Yale. "Digital Atlas of New Haven." Map. Digital Atlas of

New Haven. http://yalemaps.maps.arcgis.com/apps/PublicInformation/index.html?appid=1bfd537a633141c88a7ae5446a99024a.

11. U.S Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service. National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form. Compiled by Alison Gilchrist. Edited by John Herzan. Research report no. 938 835. National Register of Historic Places Inventory. New Haven, CT: Government Printing Office, 1983.

12. Vision Government Solutions. "228 Park St. New Haven, CT." New Haven, CT Online Assessment Database. Last modified 2016. http://gis.vgsi.com/newhavenct/Parcel.aspx?pid=16749.