New Haven Oral History Project

I. General Histories

1. Rae, Douglas W. City: Urbanism and its End. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.

Overview of twentieth century New Haven, with a focus on the mayoralties of Frank Rice and Richard C. Lee. Views the growth and decline of the city through the lens of urbanism, with a focus on market and structural forces that have encouraged and discouraged urban development. Thorough bibliography. The place to start for any New Haven research project.

2. Osterweis, Rollin G. Three Centuries of New Haven: The Tercentenary History, 1638-1938. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953.

The only comprehensive history of New Haven’s first three centuries. No bibliography, but decent footnotes. A useful glossary and chronology. The best one-stop shopping for New Haven’s earlier history.

3. Atwater, Edward E., ed. History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time. New York, NY: W. W. Munsell & Co., 1887.

Until Osterweis, the definitive history of early New Haven. Useful now mostly as a primary source for descriptions of the city in the mid to late nineteenth century.

4. Shumway, Floyd and Richard Hegel, eds. New Haven: An Illustrated History. Windsor Publications, 1981.

Eight essays on varied, broad aspects of New Haven’s history since the seventeenth century, including “New Haven and the Sea,” “New Haven Industry,” and “The Social History of New Haven.” Includes photographs from the New Haven Colony Historical Society’s archives.

II. 1950s – 1960s: The Urban Renewal Period

1. Dahl, Robert A. Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961.

One of the classic works of twentieth century political science. Dahl explores how power is distributed among New Haven’s constituencies, focused on 1955-1960.

2. Domhoff, G. William. Who Really Rules?: New Haven and Community Power Reexamined. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978.

Domhoff rejects Dahl’s thesis, arguing that power resided more with the Chamber of Commerce and other economic elites than with elected officials. Useful discussion of the early (1940s) roots of urban redevelopment planning in New Haven.

3. Wolfinger, Raymond E. Politics of Progress. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Associated with Dahl, Wolfinger had privileged access to the Lee administration, particularly during the 1950s. This is his account of urban renewal from the inside.

4. Talbot, Allan R. The Mayor’s Game: Richard Lee of New Haven and the Politics of Change. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1967.

A narrative account of Dick Lee and his urban renewal policies from 1951 through 1965. Includes overviews of the redevelopment projects and Community Progress, Incorporated. Useful timeline of events in the back.

5. Powledge, Fred. Model City: One Town’s Efforts to Rebuild Itself. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

Powledge, a reporter, offers a journalistic account of the breakdown of the urban renewal dreams in the late 1960s, covering the 1967 riots and increasing racial antagonism.

6. Miller, William Lee. The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society: An Encounter with a Modern City. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

Miller, a Yale faculty member, reports on his experience as a Democratic New Haven alderman from 1963-1965, focusing on race relations and desegregation efforts.

III. African-American New Haven History

1. Williams, Yohuru. Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven. St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 2000.

Williams describes the efforts of the NAACP, CORE, and Black Panthers in New Haven during the 1960s. Argues that these groups were often co-opted and drawn to infighting by the Lee administration in City Hall.

2. Warner, Robert Austin. New Haven Negroes, A Social History. New York, NY: Arno Press, 1969 (c1940).

An overview of the African-American experience in New Haven, limited in usefulness for contemporary topics by its age.

3. Balzer, Richard. Street Time: Text Based on Conversations with Fred Harris. New York, NY: Grossman Publishers, 1972.

Fred Harris was the president of the Hill Parents Association. Along with a number of photographs of the Hill neighborhood, this book contains Harris’s first-person account of the HPA, including a focus on the 1967 riots.

IV. Architecture

1. Brown, Elizabeth Mills. New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976.

Organized as a series of walking tours, an excellent building by building, street by street guide to New Haven’s architecture.

2. Scully, Vincent, et al. Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2004.

While most of the chapters focus mostly on Yale and on earlier periods, Scully’s conclusion, “Modern Architecture at Yale: A Memoir,” is a first-person overview of Yale’s role in the physical shaping of the city since 1950.

V. Websites

1. Data Haven

Includes extensive economic, social, and health data on the 22 towns of South Central Connecticut.

2. Historical New Haven Digital Collection

Includes an extensive collection of maps, photographs, and demographic data.

3. New Haven Data Book

Data organized by the New Haven City Plan Department relating to the city’s demographics, housing and land use, economy and business development, environmental quality, transportation, and community services.

4. Life in the Model City: Stories of Urban Renewal in New Haven

Oral history-based exhibit about urban renewal in New Haven, produced by the New Haven Oral History Project.

For a more complete annotated bibliography, including the history of earlier periods, see Professor Robert Ellickson’s tremendously helpful online work.