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    Hamden Revisited
    Hamden Revisited
    Hamden Revisited
    Ebook136 pages25 minutes

    Hamden Revisited

    By Hamden Historical Society

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    At the turn of the 20th century, the town of Hamden, Connecticut, “the Land of the Sleeping Giant,” was a patchwork of small hamlets, largely rural and agricultural. During the next 100 years, it would undergo a dramatic transformation; as orchards and fields gave way to factories and subdivisions, Hamden’s population grew from only a few thousand at the beginning of the century to over 60,000. In the time of war needs, local industries like the Web Shop factory and High Standard Manufacturing retooled to meet demands. The middle of the century saw the appearance of some of the first shopping malls in the state, including Hamden Plaza. Major universities attracted workers, families, intellects, and authors. Hamden was the childhood home of poet laureate Donald Hall, the residence of playwright Thornton Wilder, and the birthplace of Ernest Borgnine. As the town’s diversity grew, the community faced the challenges and opportunities of each generation and, inevitably, its identity evolved.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJun 23, 2014
    ISBN9781439645857
    Hamden Revisited
    Author

    Hamden Historical Society

    Hamden was compiled by members of the Hamden Historical Society, including town historian Martha Becker. The photographs in this collection are drawn almost entirely from the society's archive. Proceeds from the book will benefit the historical society.

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      Book preview

      Hamden Revisited - Hamden Historical Society

      images.

      INTRODUCTION

      The title of this volume, Hamden Revisited, not only conveys that it is a sequel to an earlier photographic essay, Images of America: Hamden, published in 2004, but that this further selection is another trip through a community’s past, a history that every new visit rewards. That is the nature of the past; stories and images can be assembled to tell a new tale or an old one in a different way. That is what this book attempts to do. If, along the way, anyone who picks up this book indulges in some nostalgia because he or she recognizes their own faces, or those of family or friends, or perhaps familiar sights that have now disappeared in all but memory and old photographs, all the better.

      Hamden was originally part of the New Haven colony, founded in 1638 by a Puritan group from England headed by Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, who purchased a large tract of land from the local Quinnipiac Indians. Settlement in the area had begun sporadically in the 1730s, as farmers ventured northward for more and better land for their crops, and entrepreneurs took advantage of the area’s many streams to create waterpower to run grist, saw, and cider mills as well as distilleries. It was not until after the Revolutionary War that Hamden was set off as a distinct town from New Haven in 1786. It became the location for early industrial villages, such as those of Eli Whitney, whose factory along Lake Whitney produced muskets for the government, and Elam Ives, whose facility along the Mill River specialized in carriage parts. Through the 19th century, the town developed slowly, remaining a collection of isolated hamlets separated by woods and fields, punctuated by collections of small factories, mines, and shops. Even modern transportation, in the form of the Farmington Canal in the 1820s, and the coming of the railroad in the 1840s, while linking the town to regional economies, still left the community relatively isolated. By the very end of the 19th century, however, things were beginning to change at a faster rate. Which brings us to the 20th century and the focus of this essay in images.

      The 20th century has been called the American Century because it was when the United States came into its own and grew to be a dominant and formative force in the world. Hamden’s history reflects that experience, writ small. At the beginning of the century, the Land of the Sleeping Giant was a sleepy place itself, a patchwork of small hamlets, largely rural and agricultural, with dirt lanes and orchards spread over the hills. But through world wars, industrialization, commercialization, the growth of suburbs, and the transportation and technological revolutions, the town grew from only a few thousand souls in 1900 to over 60,000, the size of a small city, by the

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