Among the structures situated around the New Haven Green are the oldest intact residential building in the city and one of the few commissioned statues of a native-born African in the United States. These and other historic points of interest are stops on the newly established "New Haven First" walking tour, offered from the Yale Visitor Information Center, 149 Elm St. The free tour, a collaborative partnership involving several city-based organizations, is conducted every Thursday at noon.
The approximately hour-long tour is a natural outgrowth of the daily tours of Yale the information center offers, says Shirley Johnson, manager of the center.
"Many times during the Yale tours, our tour guides were asked questions about the city itself which they may not have been able to answer," Ms. Johnson explains. "Or visitors would come and say, 'This is the Yale tour, but how can we get a tour of New Haven?' This tour is the hub, introducing the visitor -- and the local resident -- to New Haven," she notes. The weekly New Haven excursion is called the "New Haven First" tour because it emphasizes cultural and technological advances that originated in the city or were introduced by city residents, Ms. Johnson adds.
References are made during the tour, for example, to the nearby Eli Whitney Museum, which focuses on the life and inventions of the New Haven native and Yale graduate ; city resident Charles Goodyear, who in 1839 procured the patent for the vulcanization of rubber; George Coy's 1878 introduction to the world, from New Haven, of the telephone switchboard; and the world premieres of such acclaimed musical theater productions as "Oklahoma," "South Pacific," "The King and I," and "The Sound of Music" at New Haven's Shubert Theater.
The building from which the tour begins is itself historic. Completed in 1767, the Yale Visitor Information Center is the oldest intact residential structure in New Haven. From the information center -- where participants learn about the nine-square plan on which the city was founded over 350 years ago -- the tour progresses down Elm Street with a stop inside the more than century-old New Haven Free Public Library. The tour then moves towards City Hall, with a brief pause at the corner of Elm and Church streets for a look at the architecture that characterizes business and government buildings. On Church Street, just outside City Hall, the tour stops in front of the Amistad Memorial -- a rare commissioned statue of an African in the United States -- which commemorates the 1839 revolt of kidnapped Africans and the role New Haven residents played in helping them win the right to return to their homeland. After a momentary stop inside City Hall, the tour continues through the lower Green, past the memorial honoring citizens of New Haven who gave their lives during World War I, and then on to the tour's final stop, the First Church of Christ of New Haven Center Church .
Response to the new tours has been "very enthusiastic," says Ms. Johnson. "We're still training tour guides," she adds. "We hope to add high school students as tour guides at some point."
Susan Zucker, Yale Daily News office manager, is one of the volunteers from both the Yale and New Haven communities who currently serve as "New Haven First" tour guides. "The tour emphasizes community," says Ms. Zucker, who conducted one of seven New Haven tours offered during the recent International Festival of Arts and Ideas. "The fact is that New Haven is and always has been a place of community, and that's what I emphasize in my tours," notes Ms. Zucker.
In addition to Yale, organizations involved in the planning and development of the "New Haven First" tours include the City of New Haven, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven Preservation Trust, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Chamber of Commerce.
For more information about weekly "New Haven First" tours or daily tours of the Yale campus, call the Yale Visitor Information Center at 432-2300. To arrange special tours, call 432-2302.
--BY FELICIA HUNTER