Commerce and Culture: Architecture and Society on New London’s State Street  was an exhibit on display at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum from October 2005 to April 2006. Mounted by guest curator, Abigail Van Slyck, Dayton Associate Professor of Architectural History at Connecticut College, she put the students of her architectural history senior seminar to work scouting out the best images from all the local repositories to tell the story of the cultural and social history of New London’s downtown core.  The exhibit used photographs, maps, and objects to show the evolution of New London and its people through the changes that took place on this one street – from the period of the founding, through the growth of wealth of a busy port and regional commercial center, and including the difficult attempts to revitalize the downtown after it was commercially deserted for suburban malls.

The exhibit garnered an award of merit from the Connecticut League of History Organizations, the Wilbur Cross Award from the Connecticut Humanities Council, and a Leadership in History Award from the American Association for State and Local History.

While this attempt to translate that formal exhibit to the internet loses some of the impact of mural size photographs, we hope that as you explore the images presented here you’ll be able to get a sense of the changes in the community through the presentation of changes in the architecture.

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View Of State Street 1850

Click on the map year for zoomable Maps of State Street.
1850 • 1868 • 1884 • 1901 • 1912 • 1921 • 1951

A Century of Change

Stretching uphill from the harbor to the dignified courthouse built in 1784, State Street has been the organizing spine of New London since the town’s founding in 1646.  Yet, most of the buildings standing on State Street today have been erected since 1850, when New Londoners began a wholesale reorganization of urban space that continued well into the 20th century.

Although the economic prosperity of the whaling industry and the arrival of the railroad in 1849 were important enabling conditions, this urban reorganization was not just a matter of New Londoners using new-found wealth and easy access to metropolitan centers to do more of what they had always done.  Instead, this remaking of State Street involved a more substantial rethinking of the character of urban space.

While houses—large and small—once sat in close proximity to artisans’ workshops and general stores, Victorian State Street was increasingly subdivided into three zones: an industrial swath along the waterfront, a green and leafy neighborhood of genteel villas and cultural institutions near the courthouse, and a commercial district in between.

Functional specialization affected individual buildings as well as urban space. New buildings encouraged the pursuit of leisure and culture in spaces insulated from the sights, sounds, and smells of the world of labor.  As a result, some New Londoners could adopt trappings of gentility that had become associated with middle-class respectability.

If 19th-century State Street was the product of a Victorian tendency to make class distinctions visible, 20th-century State Street was shaped—and repeatedly re-shaped—in the pursuit of profit.  As the commercial district expanded, it eventually displaced the residential neighborhood at the top of the hill.  At the same time, successive cycles of renovation altered the ground-story shop fronts of older commercial blocks.  By the 1970s, however, such modernizations did little to help State Street businesses compete with new, automobile-oriented shopping malls.  A bold scheme to transform the thoroughfare into a pedestrian mall—dubbed Captain’s Walk—failed to reverse this trend.

Today, many New Londoners are committed to repopulating this streetscape created by their Victorian predecessors.  The future of State Street, however, is by no means clear.

From Exhibit: Commerce and Culture: New London’s State Street

Abigail Van Slyck ~ Curator

Within a few years, however, there were serious concerns about the mall’s efficacy.  A 1977 poll found most city residents in favor of reopening the street to automobile traffic—something that eventually happened in 1990.  Although many of its traces are still visible today—especially in street paving—Captain’s Walk is often blamed for having “killed” State Street.

If Captain’s Walk looms large in State Street’s history, it was not the first attempt to manage the impact of vehicles on the urban environment.  From the 1920s on, city officials implemented a wide range of technologies to control the presence of automobiles on State Street.

In the early 20th century, this character began to change, as commercial blocks continued to march steadily up the hill.  While structures like the Plant (now Dewart) Building housed professional offices, they nonetheless brought a distinctly urban character to upper State Street, a process that reached its peak in 1926 when the Williams house was demolished to make way for the Garde Theater.

A Sample of Pictures of Upper State Street  

View of Upper State Street in 1880

View of State Street from Huntington Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spaulding House

Williams House

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New London Public Library

Old Thames Yacht ClubNew London Public Library

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desk in New London Public Library

New London Public Library Reading Room

 

 

Mohican Hotel uner construction

Souvenier Cup and Plate in NLCHS collections

Brandagee House

Eager to locate businesses along this thriving commercial artery, entrepreneurs bought up and pulled down several of the gracious homes that had once graced the middle stretches of State Street.  At the same time, many of the wooden buildings that had housed New London’s businesses were replaced by large masonry commercial blocks.  Characterized by ground-floor shops sporting large plate-glass display windows, these blocks brought a new gentility to the shopping experience by separating delivery, storage, and bookkeeping functions from the spaces where customers examined goods. 

Mariners Bank Facade

Glimpse of Mohican Hotel

Banks and hotels catering to “the better class” of travelers helped complete the  refinement of New London’s commercial core.

Stereopticon

Bishop and Kenyon, photographers
American, Stereopticon, Public Library of New London

Taller and broader than even its three-story neighbors, Bacon’s Marble Block was further distinguished from those wooden and brick buildings by its classically-detailed marble façade.   Bacon operated a billiard hall in the building, offering “luxurious surroundings . . . genial companionship . . . and a fine stock of wines, liquors, and cigars” (according to an 1884 advertisement). 

In the 1930s and 1940s, painter Beatrice Cuming lived and worked on the upper floors of Bacon’s Marble Block, often painting the vibrant street life she observed along State Street.

Located opposite Green Street (and visible on the 1850 map), the Brainard house was one of several substantial houses gracing the middle stretches of State Street in the early 19th century.  It stood close to the sidewalk, but used fencing, steps, and plantings to reinforce the boundary between the private space of the home and the public space of the street.  The house was torn down before 1868.

Post Office

Old City Hall

Also found on State and Main street were the Post Office and Old City Hall. 

Celebrating Japanese Surrender on State Street

As civic leaders began to perceive the Parade as the gateway to downtown New London, the area also became the focus of beautification schemes and a site for community-wide commemoration efforts.  This trend started in 1896 with the erection of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, but it has continued more recently with the relocation of the Nathan Hale Schoolhouse to the site.

While civic leaders controlled the physical evolution of the Parade, the meaning of the Parade—what it says about New London and the intended audience for that message—has been the subject of lively debate.  Sometimes this discussion has been overt (as in recent public deliberations about a proposed pedestrian bridge).  More often, however, the debate has been implicit in promotional images that carefully disguised the Parade’s proximity to New London’s “skid row.”

View of New London from Fort Griswold (1853)

E. C. Kellogg, after drawing by Joseph C. Ropes (1812-1885)
American, Lithograph, New London County Historical Society

Ropes focuses on the commercial activity at the city’s busy harbor, but is careful to include the traditional seats of authority as well.  The courthouse and several church steeples (particularly that of the First Congregational Church) are the most easily recognizable components of this townscape.

Union House Fire on Bank Street (1854)

Frederick L. Allen (1820-1872)
American, Oil on canvas, Lyman Allyn Art Museum

 Although the dramatic events that Allen depicts occurred on Bank Street, the artist also documents the south side of the Parade as it appeared in the middle of the 19th century.  Behind the liberty pole is an 1840s brick building known since the 1880s as the Winthrop Hotel.  The fire illuminates the façade of a brick building that housed clothiers Lyon and Robbins on the corner of State and Banks streets.  Originally known as the Hancock Building, this building also appears in Beatrice Cuming’s 1946 painting, 130 State Street.

New London, Connecticut (1876)

O. H. Bailey and Co., Boston
American, Lithograph, Lyman Allyn Art Museum

 This bird’s-eye view of Victorian State Street does a good job of capturing the monumental scale that recent buildings had introduced to State Street’s commercial district.  This is particularly true of Bacon’s Marble Block (built in 1868; number 41 on this view) and the Crocker House (built in 1872; numbers 38 and 39).  This view also incorporates a remarkable level of architectural detail, including the second-floor bay window of Edward T. Avery’s photography studio (number 44) and the galleries and carriageway of the City Hotel (across the street from number 24).

 View of Bradley Stree from the Parade.  Bradley Street was known for it bars and rowdy nature, but the street is no longer in New London anymore.

Views of the Parade Throughout the Years

Parade in 1887

View of Parade and Union Station

Panorama View of Parade in 1908

Parade looking towards the Courthouse