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Old
Yale: March
2000 Scholars of corporate strategy and other business topics now prowl the halls of 52 Hillhouse Avenue, but this stately School of Management building was once the home of much more bucolic concerns. The mansion, designed in the late 1840s in the Italianate style by Henry Austin, actually started out life as the residence of John Pitkin Norton, the nation's first professor of agricultural chemistry. "It is as quiet here in the evening as though the city were miles away," wrote Norton. The avenue's almost rural feel provided a perfect environment for the researcher to pursue his academic interest -- the study of "scientific" farming. Born in 1822, Norton was the son of a wealthy farmer in Farmington, Connecticut. As a youth, he was attracted to the natural sciences, but Norton was not interested in most of the liberal arts courses that were required at Yale and other colleges. Instead, he devised his own course of study, attending lectures at Yale and studying chemistry privately with Professor Benjamin Silliman Sr. from 1840 to 1844. Norton then studied agricultural chemistry in Scotland for two years, and upon his return, Silliman, convinced that it was the time to start the first systematic instruction in science -- especially applied science -- persuaded the Yale Corporation to act. In 1846, the 24-year-old Norton, even though he lacked a formal degree, was named professor of agricultural chemistry. At the same time, Silliman's son Benjamin Jr. was appointed professor of practical chemistry, and together, the two men organized the department of scientific education, an endeavor that would evolve into the Sheffield Scientific School. After a few years, Benjamin Silliman Jr. left Yale to teach in Kentucky, leaving Norton in sole charge of the department. Not only did Norton pioneer the development of science education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, but he continued to be concerned with the practical problems of the farmer, publishing many general articles and offering courses for farmers at Yale. In 1850 he published Elements of Scientific Agriculture, a textbook for schools. (Earlier, Norton had befriended the Africans who were acquitted of murder charges in the Amistad affair, helped arrange for them to live in Farmington, and taught them modern farming methods while they waited to return home.) Norton had the means to live in a liberal and elegant manner. After he married Elizabeth P. Marvin in 1847 and began to raise a family, he decided to build a comfortable home near his mentor's residence on Hillhouse Avenue. Architect Henry Austin, who was already well known for his work on the Yale Library (now Dwight Hall), the Grove Street Cemetery gateway, and the New Haven railroad station, had begun to transform the architectural look of New Haven residential streets by creating designs in the Italianate style. On Hillhouse Avenue, the designer developed two variations on that theme. The first, built for Professor James Dwight Dana and now the headquarters of Yale's statistics department, is a rather prim Italianate cube. Norton's home, on the other hand, is of a more romantic and daring design modeled on the Italian villa. A watercolor painting and floor plans of Norton's house in Austin's architectural plan book vividly document the original design. Inspired by a published design by Andrew Jackson Downing, Austin incorporated many of the Italian Villa style features, including an asymmetrical campanile tower, rows of tall windows with balconies and awnings, bracketed cornices, and a front arcade. A two-story stained glass window illuminated the grand staircase. Unfortunately, Norton's time at 52 Hillhouse was brief. After suffering from tuberculosis, the professor died in 1852 at age 30, and his wife and young son moved away. Over the intervening years, however, the house has had many Yale occupants: John Davenport, Class of 1802, who was a direct descendant of John Davenport, a cofounder of the New Haven Colony; the Drama School; Arnold Gesell's child study center; the Center for Alcohol Studies; and the Economic Growth Center, among them. The city feels much closer than it did in Norton's day, and Yale never became a center of scientific agriculture. But the professor's feelings about his residence are still apt. "The house," Norton wrote, "seems more and more lovely every day." |
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Yale
Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. USA.
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