Westville began as a small separate village outside of New Haven proper. As the city expanded, the trolley line traveled west, connecting Westville in the mid 19
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century. The village became prosperous as a manufacturing center, with factories springing up along the West River, first paper mills, then the Diamond Match Company and others. In 1858, Donald Mitchell, a noted landscape architect moved from New York to Westville, into a section he named Edgewood. Mitchell was involved in the layout of Edgewood and the western end of the city, but his principal contribution was the design of the city parks -- a varied group of inland, wetland, shorefront, and mountainous pieces of land which he made into one of the most distinguished park systems in the country.
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Edgewood Magnet School is part of a large urban school district. We are located in a residential setting with many of our students walking to school from their houses down the street. Directly across the street from the school is Edgewood Park, one of New Haven’s many parks. The school neighborhood is an ideal setting to give students the basic knowledge of a gridded neighborhood with streets running parallel to each other and perpendicular to avenues.
Within our neighborhood, we have many buildings that are common to an evolved setting. Different styles of homes and dwellings show passage of time. City buildings show the needs of our community, the police station, the fire station, our library, markets, restaurants, banks. Why are they different looking? How are they different on the inside?