Courtyard Apartments: A Suburban Solution
By Katy Rosenthal
The millennial-driven reversal of urban flight in recent years has been reflected in the market by a focus on the development of luxury housing; affordable housing in “renewed” urban areas has suffered, and familiar quagmires shaped by the resulting inequality have reared their heads. New Haven residents may not be aware that they are surrounded by, and perhaps beneficiaries of, a solution to similar problems that presented themselves in the early stages of urban crowding and subsequent suburbanization. At the turn of the 20th century, a host of “courtyard” or “garden” apartments—identifiable by their U or H shaped layouts—were built to address the city’s new housing needs, particularly along the residential thoroughfares of Chapel Street, Whitney Avenue, and Orange Street.
A Sanborn Company map showing the block bordered by Whitney Avenue and Linden, Cottage, and Livingston Streets in 1911 compared to one showing the same area in 1923 demonstrates the radical transformation that occurred during the period:
The block-encompassing estate seen on the 1911 map already shows a neighborhood in transition. From an 1858 Directory of New Haven:
Named for a COTTAGE on the estate of wealthy New Yorker Henry Whitney. Henry was related to the Hillhouses through marriage and acquired the land on the east side of Whitney Ave. where he built his Greek villa, Belmont, designed by A. J. Davis. (Brown, 36) In the 1890s the estate began to be broken up, streets laid out, and houses built.
Even within the same block, the styles of these buildings range fantastically. However, as a group, they can largely be categorized as examples of the revivalist movements fashionable in the Victorian Era, the influence of which could still be felt in the following decades. Frequenters of Whitney Avenue have surely noticed the triplet Spanish Colonial Revival apartments, particularly as the movement does not have much New Haven representation.
A more common style for the execution of these residences was Tudor Revival, with the recognizable decorative half-timbering becoming a particular hallmark of its 1920s and ‘30s suburban iterations.
The quality of living provided by these types of residences is integrally tied to the city planning initiatives that built them, which emphasized the benefits of urban life, primarily: walkability, community, and the ease of not having to maintain a detached single-family home. Were they to be zoned off into strictly residential neighborhoods as opposed to integrated with the businesses that provide goods, services, and employment, the essence of their concept would disintegrate.
This is precisely what happened in the 1940s, when zoning laws that had been taking effect in larger cities became the modus operandi across the postwar landscape, where urban flight was the trend of the nation. Euclidean zoning largely rendered low-rise housing options such as courtyard apartments and their mixed-use neighborhoods illegal in two ways: firstly, through regulations enforcing separate zoning for varied building purposes, and secondly, through requirements within residential zones for buildings to consist solely of either detached single-family homes or mid-rise to high-rise apartments.
In New Haven, the original vision for low-rise, multi-family housing can still be found alive and well. Perhaps the availability of this excellently preserved and therefore actively used housing style is one of the unsung reasons why millennials have been making New Haven their home.
Katy Rosenthal is a volunteer for the New Haven Preservation Trust.
Resources for further learning:
New Haven’s Courtyard Apartments