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NEW HAVEN, an industrial and university city in south central Connecticut, the county seat of New Haven Co., 72 mi. by railroad northeast of New York City. The city, originally located on low land at the head of New Haven Harbor on Long Island Sound, has since expanded inland to higher ground, and East Rock (380 ft. high) and West Rock (420 ft. high), the precipitous southern termini of two ridges, dominate the city on the east and west. These two traprock cliffs are the dominant geographical features of the city. New Haven is protected on the landward side by high land: the Woodbridge Plateau on the west, the Mount Carmel Range on the north, and sandstone and traprock ridges on the east. The country around the city is suitable for fruit and vegetable farming and for dairying.
     New Haven was founded in 1638 by Theophilus Eaton and Rev. John Davenport as Quinnipiac and was the first city in American to have a "city plan," being laid out in a half-mile square pattern around the New Haven Green. Two years later the town was given its present name, and in 1784 it was incorporated as a city. In the nineteenth century it became important as a shipping center and enjoyed a prosperous trade with the West Indies, Europe, and the Orient. During the Civil War, it developed rapidly as a manufacturing center, and its industries have since that time continued to prosper. From the time of Eli Whitney, the city has attracted inventors and industrialists, and it was here that the first sulphur matches were made (1835), the first automatic revolvers (by Samuel Colt, 1836), the first vulcanized rubber (by Charles Goodyear, 1844), the first telephone switchboard (1877), and the first radio (by Lee De Forest, 1904).
     Points of interest in the city include the New Haven Green, with its three famous churches dating from the early nineteenth century, especially the splendid Center Church, one of the masterpieces of Ithiel Town; the Harkness Memorial Tower at Yale University, a famous gothic tower designed by James Gamble Rogers; the Payne Whitney Gymnasium of Yale, the largest such structure in the world; the New Haven Historical Society; the Peabody Museum of Yale University, one of the great natural history museums of the world; the Yale Gallery of Fine Arts; the Yale Old Campus, with its famous old Connecticut Hall, dating back to pre-Revolutionary times; the magnificent Sterling Memorial Library of Yale, one of the world's outstanding libraries, with nearly 4,000,000 books; the famous Yale Bowl, seating 75,000 spectators; and many other points of historic and scenic interest. Known as the "City of Elms" New Haven is also noted for its parks, hospitals, and educational institutions, most notably Yale University, founded in 1701 and established in New Haven in 1716.
     New Haven is served by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and by the American and Eastern air lines. Prominent as a manufacturing city, its products include guns, ammunition, hardware, clocks and watches, rubber goods, clothing, machinery and machine tools, paper boxes, toys, and cigars.

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