Knowing Our Place

In this episode of Knowing Our Place , we explore the remarkable rise and dramatic fall of Peter R. Carll, the United States marshal, theater impresario, and visionary behind New Haven’s great nineteenth century opera house. Standing at the intersection of ambition, spectacle, politics, and urban transformation, Carll helped reshape Chapel Street during an era when American cities were rapidly rei...

In the heart of downtown New Haven, as automobiles began appearing alongside horse drawn wagons on Chapel Street, a series of glowing stained glass lunettes crowned the Union League Conversation Room. Installed in 1903 during the construction of the club’s grand new addition, artist Charles Edward Hubbell painted scenes celebrating American identity, endurance and defiance. The result was a room s...

In October 1789, during the first congressional recess, mere months after the Constitution took effect, George Washington set out from New York on a demanding tour through New England. The young United States was fragile and widely mistrusted, and Washington’s journey was meant to give the new federal government a visible, tangible legitimacy. Traveling rough Connecticut roads, he arrived in New H...

In March of 1860, Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful two-hour speech in New Haven that helped transform him from a regional figure into a national political force.  Speaking at Union Hall before a large audience that included Yale students, Lincoln made a clear and persuasive moral appeal that the future of the nation depended on a system where labor was free, upward mobility was possible, and s...

At Chapel and College Streets lies a stretch of ground where centuries of American history converge. From Roger Sherman’s home in the Revolutionary era to the string of Broadway premieres staged at the Shubert Theater, this single block serves as an active archive of New Haven’s evolution. By the late 20th century, that legacy was collapsing under the weight of failed urban renewal and cultural de...

A New Haven bed in the dead of winter required a brass warming pan, glowing with red-hot hickory coals, to be violently swept back and forth across the linen sheets. Pause for just one second, and the fabric would ignite. Remove the pan entirely, and the sleeper would freeze. In the long, brutal winters of the seventeenth century, water routinely froze solid inside wooden pitchers sitting just fee...

Describing the geology of New Haven, Connecticut, through the lens of deep time involves visualizing a dramatic, slow-motion transformation over hundreds of millions of years, where ancient oceans closed, mountains rose and eroded, and glaciers carved the modern landscape. This terrain was formed by numerous eruptions of magma and multiple continental collisions, particularly the formation of Pang...

While the ship Hector was sailing across the Atlantic in the spring of 1637, the English settlers of New England were conducting a genocidal war against the Pequot. In the month of May, English soldiers burned the Pequot fort near New London and massacred many hundreds of Pequot men, women and children. The few who escaped fled westward along the shore of Long Island Sound.  As the soldiers pursue...

In 1789, Roger Sherman pushed back against fears that America’s new government would drift toward aristocracy. Corresponding with John Adams, Sherman argued instead for a system of shared power, where the Senate anchors the republic, the states remain vital, and the executive is guided, not unchecked. Their exchange sheds light on a founding tension that remains unresolved: how to balance authorit...

In 1784, New Haven faced severe congestion near Chapel Street, with tangled property lines hindering expansion. Mayor Roger Sherman, national statesman and expert surveyor, helped resolve this by orchestrating a land swap among himself, his brother-in-law James Prescott, and neighbor Mary Lucas.  Instead of cash, Sherman traded his Chapel Street frontage for Lucas’s land behind Prescott, while Luc...

“Being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.” Knowing Our Place is a podcast by Arthur Mullen, exploring two Americas, and the person sitting in darkness trying to understand them. Through history, philosophy, and lived experience, each episode traces how parts come to stand for wholes: moments, phrases, and decisions that echo across time. This...