Downtown New Haven

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is a 15-day festival that takes place in New Haven, Connecticut. The festival presents performing arts, lectures, and conversations that celebrate influential artists and thinkers from around the world. The Festival's free headliner concerts on the New Haven Green attracts thousands of spectators.

The New Haven Green is a 16-acre (65,000 m2) privately owned park and recreation area located in the downtown district of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It comprises the central square of the nine-square settlement plan of the original Puritan colonists in New Haven, and was designed and surveyed by colonist John Brockett. Today the Green is bordered by the modern paved roads of College, Chapel, Church, and Elm streets. Temple Street bisects the Green into upper (northwest) and lower (southeast) halves. The green is host to numerous public events, such as the International Festival of Arts and Ideas and New Haven Jazz Festival, summer jazz and classical music concerts that can draw hundreds of thousands of people, as well as typical daily park activities. The New Haven Green Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark District for the architectural significance of the three 19th-century churches located there.The New Haven Green is one of the oldest and most well-known town greens in the nation, dating back to at least 1638. As of July 2017, the City of New Haven offers free public WiFi on the Green.

The Chapel Square Mall was a shopping mall in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. It was one of the first fully enclosed air-conditioned downtown malls in the United States; it has now been converted into apartments.

The Taft Hotel was a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut. The building is still extant, primarily used for apartments. It is a contributing part of the Chapel Street Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel building, completed in 1912, has twelve stories, and operated with 450 rooms. It sits on the corner of Chapel and College streets.The building contains a bar, Bar Ordinary. The space is the oldest bar space in New Haven. The site hosted an ordinary or tavern as early as 1659, and hosted Benedict Arnold and George Washington. Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft may also have visited. In the 18th century it was called the Beers Tavern, then as the New Haven Hotel in the mid-19th century. In 1910, the Taft Hotel was built. By the 1980s, the hotel bar room became Richter's, owned by Yale graduate and crew instructor Richter Elser. The bar closed in 2011, replaced by Bar Ordinary in April 2013.The Taft Hotel shutdown in 1973, in part due to competition from the modern Sheraton-Park Plaza (known as the Omni New Haven, as of 2022) that had opened a block away in 1970 as part of major urban renewal project in Downtown New Haven. The adjacent Adams Hotel, which had been built as an annex to the Taft, had closed some time earlier, although had been leased by the Culinary Institute of America for student housing until 1970. Zoning issues related to parking hampered early efforts to redevelop the Taft and Adams hotels into apartments. While the Taft was redeveloped, the Adams was acquired by the City of New Haven, and was demolished in 1980 to build a modern lobby addition to the historic Shubert New Haven theater building.Taft Realty Associates began owning and managing the building in 1994, having purchased the building for $3.2 million. In 2022, the building was sold by Taft Realty Associates to an affiliate of Paredim Partners, an owner and manager of apartments, for $52.5 million.

Harmanus Welch Hall is a freshman dormitory at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The building is located on Yale University's Old Campus. Pierce N. Welch, an 1862 graduate of Yale College, Mrs. Cora Van Milligan, and Mrs. Grace M. Davies, heirs of Harmanus M. Welch, mayor of New Haven from 1860 to 1863, donated the building to Yale in 1891 in accordance with their father's wishes. The architect Bruce Price designed the building. Welch Hall faces College Street and the New Haven Green on one side and the interior of Yale's Old Campus on the other. Carved above the first-floor windows at both ends of the College Street façade is the inscription AD 1891. The dormitory is Victorian English Collegiate in style and built of Longmeadow freestone. The building has been altered and renovated several times. The first floor, converted in 1938 for the Office of Admissions and the Freshman Year, was restored to use as a dormitory in 1962 and 1964. In 1976, the building underwent a major renovation led by architect Herbert S. Newman and funded by John Hay Whitney, a 1926 graduate of Yale College.Welch Hall is currently occupied by Davenport College freshmen. It is considered among Yale students to be one of the more desirable freshman residence halls because it has many single bedrooms, large common rooms, and internal emergency exit doors without alarms, allowing residents to move freely between different parts of the building without having to go outside or through the basement. On the building's first floor are two suites, nicknamed the "10-pack" and the "12-pack," that are two of Yale's largest freshmen suites. On the building's fourth and fifth floors are the coveted female-only "Princess Suites," which feature two-story common areas, skylights, and spacious bedrooms.

Claire's Corner Copia is a kosher vegetarian restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut. It is located at 1000 Chapel Street near the campus of Yale University and the New Haven Green. It is owned by chef Claire Criscuolo, and was formerly co-owned with her late husband Frank Criscuolo. The couple used Claire Criscuolo's engagement ring as collateral for the loan they needed to open the restaurant.When the restaurant was founded in 1975, it was not vegetarian. Chef Criscuolo told the Yale Daily News that she removed meat from the menu in a "radical move" that "forces people to eat more fruits and vegetables." A former nurse, Criscuolo prides herself on offering healthy food. The restaurant has an extensive vegan menu.Lonely Planet calls Claire's "fresh, organic" food "the best" in town. Popular menu offerings include smoothies, fresh juices, and desserts that are vegan, gluten-free, or both. Claire's also has a dairy-kosher certification issued by both Rabbi David Avigdor and Rabbi Hyman from the Vaad Hakashrus of Fairfield County in Connecticut.

The Anchor is a popular bar and restaurant located at 272 College Street in downtown New Haven that operated from the 1930s until 2015, reopening in 2016. The establishment is popular with students and faculty of neighboring Yale University and patrons of the Shubert Theatre. It was a favorite of playwright Thornton Wilder and also catered to such celebrities as Lucille Ball, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and George C. Scott. It is known for its preserved Art Moderne facade and interior. In 2014 Esquire magazine ranked the Anchor among the nation's top 25 bars.

The Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse is a monumental courthouse of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, located on the east side of the New Haven Green. Built between 1913 and 1919, the structure was spared from a planned demolition in the 1960s, and instead renovated to continue its useful life. For many decades, it also served as a post office, although the post office moved to another location in 1979. It is an excellent example of Classical Revival architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

The Shubert Theatre is a 1,600-seat theatre located at 247 College Street in New Haven, Connecticut. Originally opened in 1914 by The Shubert Organization, it was designed by Albert Swazey, a New York architect and built by the H.E. Murdock Construction Company. It is currently operated as a non-profit organization by CAPA (The Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts) under the aegis of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts. The theater struggled financially in the 1970's and closed in 1976. The theater building was subsequently acquired by the City of New Haven, and the interior was restored. The Adams Hotel, which was located between the historic theater building and College Street, was demolished to build a modern lobby addition. The theatre reopened under city ownership in 1983, operated by CAPA.

The Institute Library (Originally established as the New Haven Young Men's Institute, and sometimes called the Young Men's Institute Library) is a membership library in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1826 in the tradition of Mechanics' Institutes, it is New Haven's oldest community library and one of the few membership libraries now remaining in North America. The organization was active during the 19th century as a center for lectures, debates, and classes in New Haven.

The Old Campus is the oldest area of the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the principal residence of Yale College freshmen and also contains offices for the academic departments of Classics, English, History, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy. Fourteen buildings—including eight dormitories and two chapels—surround a 4-acre (1.6 ha) courtyard with a main entrance from the New Haven Green known as Phelps Gate. The Old Campus comprised most of Yale College's grounds between its arrival in New Haven in 1718 and its 20th-century expansion. Yale's first building in New Haven, the College House, was erected in 1718 on the Old Campus' southeast corner, fulfilling the city founders' wish to have a college near New Haven's Congregational church. It was joined by Connecticut Hall in 1750, a student dormitory and Yale's only surviving building from the colonial era. A linear building plan established in 1792, known as Old Brick Row, was the first campus plan in the United States and became a template for many American college campuses built in the 19th century. After 1870, the original plan gave way to the current quadrangle of dormitories, academic buildings, and chapels. In addition to Connecticut Hall, the current buildings of Old Campus include most of the freshman dormitories of Yale College, Street Hall of the Yale University Art Gallery, and two buildings used for religious purpose: Battell Chapel, third in a succession of college chapels, and Dwight Hall, formerly the College Library. Although the current buildings have been renovated and their uses changed during the twentieth century, all were completed before 1928.

The New Haven Free Public Library (also known as the NHFPL) is the public library system serving New Haven, Connecticut. The system began in 1887 in a leased location but quickly outgrew its space. The Ives Memorial Library is the main branch of the system and is located on the New Haven Green. The neo-Georgian building was designed by Cass Gilbert and finished in 1911. This building was renovated and expanded in 1990.Murals in the main library originated as Public Works Administration projects. Two lunettes in the main hall, designed by Bancel LaFarge of Mt. Carmel, Connecticut, depict scenes from New Haven's history. The Rip Van Winkle murals in the meeting room were painted in 1934 by a team of artists led by Salvatore DiNaio and Frank J. Rutkowski. There is also a set of stained glass windows in the Ives Library designed by David Wilson of South New Berlin, New York including circular and rectangular laylights as well as rectangular and half-round windows.There are also neighborhood branches in Westville (Mitchell), Fair Haven, Dixwell (Stetson) and The Hill (Wilson). The Wilson branch features an art installation by Leila Daw depicting patterns of immigration.In April 2012, the library underwent a significant rebranding effort in celebration of its 125th anniversary. In addition to updates in design and significant changes in borrowing policies, the library also adopted a retitled NHFPL125+ classification.