SILENT GROUNDS COLLECTIVE · DIGITAL READING ROOM
Step into the streets, workplaces and gathering places that shaped our communities. Start with a photograph. Follow the story.
OPEN FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHPreserve. Restore. Remember.
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2011
The power station rises beyond a New Haven intersection. The street-level view shows how the industrial building remained part of the surrounding neighborhood after generation ended.
1936
Carl Van Vechten photographed the Bowl more than twenty years after its opening. The empty curves of seating make the stadium’s continuous shape especially clear.
Circa 1865–1870
Whitney, Beckwith & Paradice’s stereoscopic view looks toward the harbor and Long Wharf. The two adjacent pictures form one stereograph, preserved here as a complete historical object.
Whitney, Beckwith & Paradice -- Photographer; Public domain; Wikimedia Commons
Original source1957
1970s postcard of two Alco FA-1 units at New Haven Yard in mid-1957
August 13, 2010
A surviving Cedarcrest building photographed in Newington in August 2010. The image records the campus in its later hospital era, a century after the tuberculosis institution opened.
Josh Michtom, Flickr; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Reproduced for this noncommercial nonprofit archive under the same license.
Original source · Reuse terms2008-10-24
Andrew Mellon Library, Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Connecticut, USA. Built 1925.
Published 1919
The main hospital appears beyond its open grounds. The 1919 history describes the Army hospital occupying the William Wirt Winchester memorial buildings. A place associated with tuberculosis care became part of the wartime medical system.
History and Roster of the United States Army General Hospital No. 16 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), scan page 12. Internet Archive / Library of Congress.
Original source · Reuse termsUndated; historic engineering survey photograph
Winchester Tract K shooting range, looking southwest.
Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service; photographer not identified in source metadata / Public domain
Original sourcePublished 1917
Rail lines fill the foreground of this broad view of the Bridgeport works. Factory blocks, chimneys and a water tower show how the business occupied an industrial landscape connected to transport. Published in a 1917 local history, the photograph records a working complex long before later abandonment.
George Curtis Waldo, History of Bridgeport and Vicinity, volume I (1917), plate facing p. 182; Internet Archive via Wikimedia Commons.
Original source · Reuse termscirca 1930–1945
The printed moon, bright signs and crowded amusement frontage make Beach Street into a nighttime destination. This is a colored linen postcard, not an unaltered color photograph. It records how Savin Rock was pictured and sold to visitors.
Tichnor Brothers, publisher. Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers Collection. Public domain in the United States.
Original sourceCirca 1977–1978
Bruce Springsteen performing on stage, identified by source as New Haven Coliseum. Bruce Springsteen performing at the Coliseum, around 1977–1978. Concert photographs reveal the cultural life inside an often-debated building.
Carl Lender / Carl Lender on Flickr; Wikimedia Commons
Original source · Reuse termsJuly 21, 1968
Roger Puta photographed the former New Haven Connecticut Company open car at the museum in East Haven. This is a preservation-era photograph, not an image of regular street service.
THE COLLECTION CATALOG
PEOPLE · PLACES · MEMORY
Browse 513 images across the archive, with dates, short captions and a closer look at the people and places they show.
County names follow the historical geographic boundaries used in these records.
TOWN READING ROOM
Scovill: dam on John D’s Pond · Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service; photographer not identified in source metadata / Public domainCOLLECTION 042 Industrial sites
Waterbury
Factory interiors and exteriors document the buildings behind Waterbury’s brass industry.
Opening / first recorded · 1802 predecessor firm
New Haven Railroad RDC and Waterbury Union Station clock tower, August 1968 · Roger Puta / Public domainCOLLECTION 061 Railways & transit
Waterbury
A landmark tower and 1968 railroad photographs place Waterbury within a regional passenger network.
Opening / first recorded · 1909 station building
Abandoned railroad bridge over Washington Avenue in Waterbury, March 2023 · Pi.1415926535 / CC BY-SA 4.0COLLECTION 062 Railways & transit
Waterbury · Meriden · Cheshire
Bridgework in Waterbury preserves traces of a railroad that disappeared in stages.
Opening / first recorded · 1885 opening; 1888 Waterbury extension
New Haven Alcos at New Haven 1957 postcard · 1957. J.W. Swanberg; Public domain; Wikimedia CommonsCOLLECTION 093 Transportation & waterfront
New Haven · North Haven · Bridgeport · Waterbury · Greenwich
Beyond the station: locomotives, shops, freight yards and the people who kept southern New England moving.
Opening / first recorded · 1872 — New York, New Haven & Hartford formed
Destruction after Hurricane Diane · August 1955. NOAA; Public domain; Wikimedia CommonsCOLLECTION 101 Disasters & community memory
Waterbury · Winsted · New Hartford · Norwalk · Derby · Naugatuck
Streets became rivers, bridges failed and communities rebuilt: a photographic record of Connecticut’s devastating flood year.
Opening / first recorded · August 18–19, 1955 · October 15–17, 1955
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These are growing research collections. A source link identifies material held elsewhere; it does not mean a copy is included. Dates, credits and gaps accompany the records.
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