For many years, the wilderness along the West River between the city of New Haven and the village of Westville lay quiescent. In the middle of the 19th century, an iceskating area was created by flooding the low meadow from the new water system. In 1870 an association for harness racing leased Hamilton Park, which is located east of the present park, and erected a new and beautiful track for pleasure teams. This earlier park was used for baseball games and sleighing as well as other activities. In the northeast corner of what is now lower Edgewood Park stood the City’s Almshouse.
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The city of New Haven in 1889 took sixty acres of upland and meadow and turned the property over to the New Park Commission for development. The first donations of land for Edgewood Park were made by Nicholas W. Hubinger, James Mason, and Donald Mitchell. Mitchell lived above Forest Road on his farm. After the Almshouse was moved to the Spring side neighborhood, work on the Park began. More land was purchased throughout the years and in 1910 Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed the present Park. The Park contained an extensive rose garden, a lily pond, an archery field, groves and glens, a bridle path over three miles long, trails, and carriage drives. A spring of cold, pure water at the corner of Stanley Street and the Boulevard was used by the residents in the summertime; and was later utilized as a drinking fountain.
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A bronze stature of a soldier honoring Spanish American War Veterans was placed on the south side of Edgewood Avenue. It was cast from metal taken from the Maine, a ship sunk in Havana harbor, February 15, 1898. An athletic field was built on the west side of the river; playground equipment was installed on the bluffs. Under the auspices of the Holocaust Memorial Committee, an attractively landscape monument was placed in the park at the corner of Whalley and West Park Avenues to honor those who died at the hands of the Nazis.
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An adjunct to the park proper is a four-block mall on Edgewood Avenue and Winthrop Avenue to the West River. In this mall, facing Norton Street, the sculptor, Louis Benanto, carved a whimsical elephant and frog and also an imposing mother with two papoose on her back. Another tree figure, the Gentle Giant, is visible going North from the Duck Pond up the bluff towards the tot lot. This statue was carved by Harney Harendon in 1973. The Mall closest to Winthrop Avenue contains a boulder monument to Elizabeth Babbitt. The Park Commission has landscaped the malls with a bequest from Mrs. Babbitt’s will.
Edgewood Park is an 121-acre park in the western section of the city. It is divided into two parts by Edgewood Avenue. The southerly part is bounded by Boulevard, Chapel Street, Yale and Edgewood Avenues. The duck pond is in the lower park off Chapel Street; the skating rink is located off West Rock Avenue in the upper park.
The terrain includes wooded bluffs, drives, trails, cultivated areas, and marsh lands along the West River which winds through the park. The White Peking Duck, brought to the pond by man, spends the year there.
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Sometimes they are visited by black and mallard ducks. Oak trees dominate the woods, with maples, sycamores, and tulip trees in various places around them. Along the river are pockets of cattails, homes for redwing blackbirds and pheasants. Some evergreens, mostly hemlock, provide nesting sites for crows and mourning doves. The undercover is predominately spicebush, silky dogwood, and nannyberry, providing excellent cover for nesting cardinals, thrashers, thrushes and towhees. The wet bottom lands are wealthy with spring flowers, including blood-root, Dutchman’s breeches, Virginia beauty, and trillium. The water courses are frequently outlined with the blues of iris. Chipmunks, grey squirrels, opossum and raccoon, along with brown bats, represent the mammals fauna.
December 8, 1952, in the New Haven Register, the city was urged to establish a zoo in the park, but the proposition was voted down because it was an expensive project and there were more urgent projects. According to an article in the Journal Courier 2/22/56 the New Haven Park Department was scheduled to open a fly and bait-casting pool at Edgewood Park in 6/56. The dredging plan included the possibility of making a natural pond opposite the lily pool in the park, which was to be squared off by dredging, with a wooden platform in the center, so casters could operate regardless of the direction of the wind.
In the New Haven Register of 9/21/58 it was reported that improvements were underway for the Edgewood site. The beautification work was to provide flood protection. The Edgewood Park Improvement Program was centered around dredging channel widening work on a portion of the West River. The aim of the overall program was to beautify isolated sections of the park and to create additional facilities for the public, a direct result of the dredging work was to lower any flood threat in the area surrounding the park. Besides dredging the section of the river that runs through the Dark from Whalley Avenue to Derby Avenue, the New Haven Park Department built a new drive from West Rock Avenue into the archery field, rebuilt the old road to the Park’s athletic field; terraced the widened banks of the river and planted wild flowers on them, and developed areas for picnicking. An eighth to 16 inch drop in water level of the West River resulted from the dredging operation.
The Journal Courier of 1/6/61 carried an article that reported loss of 55 trees after Hurricane Carribean Lady. It was reported that Edgewood Park was hit hardest. Several trees felled and other severe damage took place. Two large oaks were removed from the park.
Edgewood Park is popular and widely used. There is a young children’s playground on Edgewood Avenue in the upper park, farther over is the older children’s playground. In cold weather, the James E. Coogan-skating rink draws crowds. In warm weather, the rink is used for summer theater and art exhibits, picnickers, pedestrians, bicyclists and benchsitters, which are constantly seen throughout the park. Since the recent installation of new tidal gates in the river, the soggy athletic field is once again popular for sports. Edgewood Park ends directly across Derby Avenue.
The section along the West River that is located near Blake Street ending at Whalley Avenue is heavily populated. There are houses, factories, a school and stores. On the corner of Whalley Avenue and Goffe Street is Beecher Elementary School and on the corner of Fitch and Blake is Beaver Hill Shopping Center. At the corner of Valley on Blake Street is the Westville Park. The Westville Park on the Stone Street side has a small playground. The park also houses an athletic field where baseball and some softball are played. The Hard Street side of the Park once housed a green house at the corner of the athletic field and now on that corner is recently built houses for the elderly. At the corner of Stone and Hard Street there was a match factory and in recent years a house was there; now the complex for the elderly occupies that entire corner. To the Valley Street side of the park you have the Geometric Tool Company and directly in front of the park is the Mite Corporation. West River runs through the park and there are several bridges located in the park.
The park has experienced great destruction from vandalism. It has a big problem with rodents and other smaller insects. Some work was scheduled to be done to the park, but has not been done yet. There has been no dredging or rechanneling of the river in this area. The river lies undisturbed.
In 1982 the Westville section of West River was heavily hit. The record indicates that this was the worst flooding problem that the area has suffered. Many persons who have occupied the area for more than 60 years were devastated at the effects that the flood left on this area. The flood was totally unexpected and New Haven was not ready to handle the task which laid before them. Many persons, especially on Blake Street had to leave their homes. Businesses, such as, the Mite Corporation, Geometric Tools Company and 500 Blake Street had to close their doors.
The people of this area had no flood insurance on their property and had to turn to the city for public assistance. The State was alloted about $2,000,000 from the Federal Government to help rebuild this section of the city. Flood money was available to individual home owners at a high interest. The people of this area was faced with a serious problem. Many could not afford to indebt themselves to replace destroyed property. The flooding problem has not been properly addressed and at this time there is no research plans to indicate that the flooding problem in this area is a priority in the city’s planning and budget.
I have contacted the Corps of engineer in Waltham Massachusetts and the Department of Environmental Protection, as well as, the Mayor of the city to seek out the plans for flood control in this area with no success. However, it is my hope by the end of the year or by the time I am ready to teach this unit, I will be able to discuss this problem with a solution to this massive problem.
Floods occur when a river is full carrying a heavy load of water that fills the channel from bank to bank. In the flood of 1982 the water eroded the land because of heavy rainfall in a very short period of time. The water had no place to empty therefore, causing a flooding of the nearby land around it.
Floods have taken a terrible toll, not only in property destruction but in human life as well. Engineers have learned that floods can be prevented by the building of diversion floodways, dams and reservoirs to carry off and store excess water. In West River there has been some talk of altering channels or dredging the river, but there are no known definite plans at this time.
The new philosophy of flood control holds that flood prevention should begin near the headwaters of the rivers and not when the flood are already out of control down in the flood plains and near the river deltas. By the proper management of farm, ranch and forest lands in the watershed near the river’s source, much of the excess water, from heavy thunder storms and torrential rains can be induced to run back into the ground where it will be available as subsurface water when needed. Engineers advocate the use of small storage reservoirs from which the waters can be released when there is an inadequate supply in the rivers. In this way, the water is not just slowed to overflow the river banks and waste itself, at the same time doing an incalculable amount of damage. Flood-control programs are inextricably linked with proper conservation practices.
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