During our in-class excursion, I walked an area west of downtown, towards Edgewood, in search of quintessential examples of the New Haven courtyard/garden apartment typology. This housing model arose in the 20th c. in an effort to provide missing middle housing for the potentially walkable residential areas near urban centers. Broadly, the theory behind middle housing (duplex, fourplex, live work, garden apartment, courtyard apartment, etc.) is that by adding density through housing typologies that fit within the formal and scalar expectations of single-family residential districts, the streets become activated by a larger and more diverse population. This, in turn, drives commercial activity, making for a more welcoming and walkable area. New Haven is home to a particularly notable number of garden and courtyard apartment buildings, with dense pockets of this type appearing in Edgewood and East Rock. With Euclidean zoning, this typological diversification is stymied, producing homogenous neighborhoods that fail to support the concepts underpinning the walkable city.

With this in mind, I am curious to explore the rise and subsequent fall of this type within our city, tracking the mid-century development in areas previously dominated by detached single-family dwellings. On my walk through Edgewood, I surveyed a 10-square-block area, from Dwight Street to Norton Street in the East/West direction, and George Street to Edgewood Ave in the North/South direction. In this area, I counted 12 instances of garden or courtyard apartments, nestled within what is predominantly 2-3 story detached homes. Rarely was a typical apartment block present, though a few more modern structures appeared as I headed west along George. The courtyard apartments were typified by a U-shape, opening to the street, breaking up a monolithic form while still offering public frontage. Often they were brick, 3-6 stories, with classical or gothic detailing. Many of the inner blocks between Dwight and Sherman are now dominated by the Yale New Haven Health campus, and it isn’t until crossing Sherman that the neighborhood feeling of Edgewood takes over. The Yale medical campus introduces a scale of building that devastates the idea of walkability. Support space for the hospitals, namely in the form of parking garages, encourages an automobile-centric city. However, past Sherman, deeper into Edgewood, a cluster of courtyard apartments are arrayed around Winthrop and Chapel, and Norton and Edgewood. These buildings mediate a scalar shift with remarkable poise, and the frontal courtyards create a sense of privacy for the residents while offering something back to the public realm of the street. Generally, these apartments were better cared for than their detached single-family neighbors, probably in part due to the fact that they are owned and operated by large, corporate real estate entities. On this note, nearly every single courtyard apartment was branded with Mandy Management signage, most often via awnings over the street-facing windows.

Moving forward, I intend to do a similar survey in East Rock and compile a map of locations of this housing type throughout New Haven. I would like to select two or three notable case studies, ideally located in separate neighborhoods, and look more closely into the evolution of the block via Sanborn maps. Hopefully, this will help to describe a period of New Haven urbanism where this typology was seen as an aspirational method for urban development. With each case study, I would also like to get a sense of interior spatial arrangements, in order to see if there are continuities across all buildings in plan. Additionally, there is interest in a social reading of the apartments, where for a specific moment in time, through the use of the New Haven registry, we might be able to reconstruct occupant history paying particular attention to occupations, social or cultural delineations, and familial legacy (i.e. intergenerational living).