On December 6, 2024, Yale Physics graduate students held their annual Holiday Happy Hour at the Provost’s House. The event included refreshments and sweet treats, cozy holiday-themed drinks, music, games and mingling.
The venue is a part of the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District, established by James Hillhouse (1754-1832), a prominent civic leader and Urban Developer in the Elm City. The goal of establishing the historic district was to transform New Haven into one of the nation’s most beautiful cities.
Through his extensive planting of elm trees on the New Haven Green and nearby right-of-ways, he helped to establish the city’s image as a bucolic community of tree-lined streets and parks that gave New Haven its nickname, “the Elm City.”
– from the New Haven Preservation Trust website.
In 1823, Hillhouse transferred title to his extensive holdings in the area to his son, the poet James Abraham Hillhouse (1789-1841). James A. Hillhouse’s efforts to further his father’s fashionable residential development were stimulated by the construction of the Farmington Canal. In 1829 he built his large mansion, Sachem’s Wood atop the knoll rising above the northern side of Sachem Street. One of the designers of Sachem Wood was A.J. Davis who worked closely with the younger Hillhouse to plan and shape the appearance of the Neighborhood.
Davis was responsible for the Mary Prichard House (1836; 35 Hillhouse Avenue), a stately two-story, three-bay wide stuccoed-brick Greek Revival style dwelling with a flat roof and slightly embellished Greek Corinthian order front portico.
The Happy Hour committee consists of graduate students Cecily Lowe, Lauren Vannell, Colin Coane, and Tal Sheffer.