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The Sound School Inter-District Marine Education Program Newsletter
- IMEP –
Habitat Information for Fishers and Fishery Area Managers
Understanding Science through History

Climate Change and The Oyster Fisheries of New Haven, CT
The 1880 – 1920 Habitat History of City Point

January 2014
The Sound School
IMEP #8
Tim Visel

Notice to Readers -
This appendix was originally part of a package of materials used for a three decade celebration of The Sound School at City Point in October 2012. It was first part of a much longer paper presented during The Sound School GreenFest in 2010. It is a habitat history regarding the oyster industry as detailed by George McNeil from the 1980s. The McNeil building (60 South Water Street) is named in memory of J. P. McNeil Oyster Company that once operated here a century ago. J.P. McNeil was George McNeil’s father. It is now the main office building for The Sound School. Oyster Point (now called City Point) experienced all of the habitat changes between 1880-1920 period called The Great Heat. Some of the largest habitat changes are detailed, including the malaria outbreak of 1904 to 1909. That resulted in the filling of thousands of acres of salt marshes and salt ponds. The history of the Public Park once called Bayview is part of that environmental history.

Between 1908-1914, Connecticut recorded several thousand cases of Malaria in the extreme heat; mosquitoes thrived and spread disease to residents mostly west of New Haven. The State of Connecticut allowed local Health Departments then to issue orders for stagnant marshes to be filled to quell the Malaria outbreaks that hit Western Connecticut during this period. High heat was most devastating to cities including New Haven as poor food handling and minimum sanitation practices such as open sewers in high heat intensified disease outbreaks. New Haven formed a special council to fill in salt marshes known to support mosquitoes in 1912 and Bay View Park at City Point next to The Sound School was filled in during this period.
The Great Heat and the New Haven Oyster Industry -
Mr. George McNeil, son of J. P. McNeil and a high school mentor of mine gave me a series of interviews, talks and describes the habitat changes after an energy pathway that blocked storms was constructed – the New Haven three segment breakwater curtain that now rings the outer harbor. The outer New Haven breakwater construction and much higher temperatures and few storms would also impact the oyster industry in ways no one could have anticipated – oyster recruitment and human health. The energy pathway which was so destructive to the shoreline here (City Point) storm waves made commercial expansion difficult for navigation and boating. However, the energy provided a habitat renewal aspect to “natural oyster beds” and helped clear the harbor of sewage under these now hot conditions. I have added components about the hydraulic conditions and newer segments about The Sound School to the original GreenFest presentation as much of it is how George McNeil related habitat changes here to me many years ago. It is now being made available to the Shoreline Preservation Taskforce – in response to questions about shoreline structures and habitat changes (2012-2013).

Tim Visel, The Sound School – October 2012

After 1880, New England temperatures began to warm leaving the bitter cold 1870s as a memory and relief to coastal populations. Storm intensity lessened and the frequency of winter storms that washed sewage from coastal harbors declined. New Haven would soon see the completion of its outer harbor breakwaters, initiated by the turbulent 1860-1870s the decades that preceded this period. Once the outer breakwaters were finished (1898) the New Haven Harbor became “quiet” and boating, shipping and shellfish aquaculture interests now expanded into the Oyster Point (now City Point) section of New Haven Harbor, long thought to be too exposed to storms (George McNeil). The dreaded nor’easters storms that were so damaging to coastal areas would now meet a series of large cut granite block walls called groins to “break the backs” of large walls of waves offshore which were termed waters rather than waves. One would fear stormy waters and these coastal structures were thus termed “breakwaters.” They did just that they broke the energy of tidal waves and storm surges.

Because of the general east west orientation of Long Island Sound, Connecticut’s harbor areas were very vulnerable to storms moving west, the “Hudson Valley storms” and those to the east, the much feared “Nor’easters”. Breakwaters in open waters were designed for both and in New Haven’s experience a semicircular curtain wall for both the southwest storms and nor’easters. As soon as the construction of the breakwaters started shipping interests must have been relieved. Something that had longed plagued navigation and coastal trade was about to be vanquished as coastal energy was known as “storm waters,” largely came to an end.

Oyster Point protrudes sharply into New Haven’s Harbor west side and is called City Point today. Relatively a narrow section of highland that descends into the harbor it has a center street; Howard Avenue at the harbor end, South Water Street that borders the harbor area. This region would soon become important in New Haven’s oyster industry, south of the first oystering center, Fair Haven built in the protected upper areas of the Quinnipiac River. It became home of the JP McNeil Oyster Company as well as the Thomas, Smith, Seal Shipt and R. W. Law Oyster Companies. These early oyster houses are now along the north side of South Water Street. Most harbor areas until now were in or near rivers as the fierce Nor’easters made open dockage and mooring impossible at City Point then called “Oyster Point.” Oyster Point was itself protected by a barrier beach spit -- a long hook of sand that extended from the West Haven Savin Rock shore. During Northeasters the spit would break sending huge breaking waves on the point. After the breakwaters were built the barrier spit stabilized and became a favored grow out place for oysters, it was then called “the beach” and the “watch house” was built over a John McNeil oyster lease and is called Sandy Point today. This barrier beach spit was very similar to what early Niantic Bay settlers had found bisecting Niantic Bay – once called “the bar.” These barrier spits in low energy periods tend to lengthen and in high energy periods (usually colder) break or split. The Dardanelles in Clinton Harbor and Cedar Island also shares a similar habitat history.

The storms that made navigation and shipping interests so difficult also had a habitat renewal or restoration role in the large natural oyster beds that once ringed the outer harbor flats. As the breakwaters were completed it became hot and storm intensity lessened and natural oyster bed is “silted over.”

The New Haven Harbor 1898-99 oyster set was immense after a coastal storm called the “Portland Gale” which sunk the steamship Portland with many lives lost. The storms that once raked Oyster Point and built sand dunes 20 to 30 feet high with scrub pines and sandy beaches had to come to an end (George McNeil). This shore had became a popular recreational area and Frederick Olmstead, the famous builder of the Boston Commons helped design the Bayview Park here first with a tidal pond and “Swan Boats” which became a well known destination in the 1890s. Those storm winds and waves at times unwelcomed guests ceased after the construction of the outer breakwaters in 1898. It became quiet and now hot. The sand dunes faded away, the swan boat pond “lakes” stagnated behind a magnificent cut granite wall in which now mosquitoes thrived in soft, warm pools and leaves collected where once stood sandy beaches. Other habitat changes were also noticed by oyster growers. The harbor bottoms that were once “blasted clean” by periodic storms were no longer scoured by storms. Oyster growers by 1905 noticed the natural sets that once were obtained on vast natural oyster beds that ringed both the East Haven and West Haven shores diminished. The storms that were once so feared for their destructive capacity also had an unknown positive habitat side – a renewing cleaning action of waves and tides; the natural cleaning of fallen leaves and the uncovering erosion of long ago buried oyster shells stopped (George McNeil). Natural oyster sets on the natural oyster beds soon failed. One of the oyster growers who noticed this first was J.P. McNeil who was once a natural growther himself and according to George McNeil (his son) one of the first oyster growers to notice the difference, the bottoms and habitats were transitioning from firm/hard bottoms to those silt filled and now soft. The JP McNeil oyster shop stood where the Sound School McNeil cafeteria is today. About the time New Haven Harbor started to obtain huge sets of a different type of shellfish, Mya soft shell clams commonly called “steamers” on sand bars. In the new heat, soft shell clam sets were huge and by 1888 limits were placed on how many oxen teams you could use on the New Haven clam flats (that included areas from Long Wharf to Savin Rock) at once. A law that remained in the CT legislature Shellfish Regulations until 1985, almost a full century later. New Haven Harbor habitats were reversing and the offshore breakwaters had speeded that process.

It was getting hot and the lack of natural energy (breakwaters) would cause New Haven’s habitats to reverse faster. As the oyster beds started to silt over with rivers carrying deposits of silt and leaves each spring, the oyster industry cleaned blank shells (cultch) with cultivators in a process called stirring or washing. They quickly realized that fouled shells – these covered in silt and leaves could no longer catch an oyster “set.” Oyster growers knew that clean shells were needed for oyster spat; J.P. McNeil noticed it and made a direct habitat link to breaking the waves, the end of a natural silt cleaning process. After the breakwaters were built, a lack of energy and high temperatures would soon further change the oyster industry. Those 1870s storms in cold weather also did something else, they would clean of the harbors of pollution especially sewage. As the temperature climbed in the 1880s sea waters became warm, almost “hot”. Bacteria naturally thrived in warm weather and sewage that poured into New Haven Harbor (often in pre-Civil War open canals and untreated) now tended to slosh back and forth with the tides. The flushing capacity of the harbor area had been substantially reduced. New Haven Harbor waters became contaminated with sewage, often in the same areas as oyster culture itself. Although the oyster industry had moved seed oysters to other areas for decades for market growth, such as the upper Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island as the natural sets were so heavy here not enough acreage was available to grow them all to adult size. It was soon faced with unsanitary growing conditions far from the river seed oyster beds, and the practice of floating oysters in low salinity areas for weight gain was often in the same waters that received raw sewage from canals (called sewers today). It was a human disease vector disaster waiting to happen, and the first direct case of oyster vectored disease (Typhus) was reported in case history as the Wesleyan rowing team case (1894). Here Wesleyan students became sick after eating raw oysters from a single purchase of oysters while the New Haven dealer was never publicly identified.

While oysters continued to grow well in the New Haven Harbor area, the practice of floating oysters in brackish waters to gain water weight prior to sale was outlawed in 1911. By 1916 New Haven faced an embargo of oysters that were linked to an outbreak of typhoid fever in New York City. The McNeil Oyster Company had abandoned grow out grounds here – and started to produce quality 2 year old seed oysters called bedding stock for transplanting to clean waters contracted by growers in eastern CT, New York, Long Island, and Wellfleet (Cape Cod) growers. Some firms however continued to market oysters from nearby contaminated grounds in the harbor area raising concerns during the 1911, 1912, and 1914 shellfish “disease” outbreaks. By 1916 the New Haven area faced an embargo, not publicly reported as the oyster industry was a large influence locally and even nationally. (Such public reports were not positive to oyster and clam sales). It was hot in 1916 and years of summer outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and typhoid outbreaks created fear and distrust about consuming raw clams and oysters. Government officials (1916) asked Connecticut to cease shipments of oysters into New York City until the sources of disease outbreaks there could be investigated (usually such diseases were linked to the consumption of raw shellfish in all reports although links were sometimes obscure but nevertheless plausible). It became common practice to link shellfish as the disease spreading vectors after 1910, prompting the prohibition of floating oysters in 1912 in New York as well. A growing war effort of industrial waste didn’t help and New Haven experienced complete oyster set failures as industry profits declined sharply, the industry here was running out of seed oysters. The request to stop shipping oysters in 1916 was largely ignored; shipments were still going out on trains at night. In 1916 Federal Officials boarded some freight cars, hauled the oyster barrels off the trains to be burned in the railroad freight yards. George McNeil’s account includes his father trying to save his oysters from being destroyed (they were harvested from eastern CT away from the New Haven Harbor area (Clinton, Mumford and Quiambaug Coves) but was unsuccessful. Here Mr. McNeil’s account turns into a personal one as he claimed the exertion and conflict caused his father, the oyster company founder to suffer a heart attack and perish.

After this incident, New Haven Oyster production started to decline, many oyster companies closed or moved to Rhode Island or New York. Steamer clams began to be harvested here as pig food and salted as bait for cod and halibut offshore ground fisheries. People didn’t really favor soft shells back then; it was more of a hard clam quahog market. The tidal flats along the west side became (Long Wharf today) thick with soft shell clams, the ecology of the harbor area was now changing and so was its fishery. By 1917 New Haven had ordered the Boulevard Park Pond filled (Malaria fears) it is the Base Ball Park now – the granite sea wall that marked the huge salt pond gate however remains and is under route 95 – you can see the end of this seawall by the New Haven Register building. When the city looked for a place to build new state of the art wastewater treatment plant in 1936, it chose City Point where once the grand walkway and beach pavilion once stood for Bayview Park. Once a desired vacation visit, it became a foul, smelly, soft marsh which often smelled bad late at night. No one wanted to walk along the shore – here anymore, and the beach was long gone by 1939, and that is where The Sound School George Foote building is today (founding Sound School Principal). Built over the grand beach walkway that no longer had a beach that was soon then the 1939 treatment plant. The Civil War sewage canal is also still here – it is now covered by the public fishing pier and the harbor waters are remarkable cleaner now compared to just the late 1970s. Oysters, soft shell clams and fish have returned to the harbor. Blue fish are caught from the public pier. However, after the breakwaters were built the natural oyster beds disappeared and then were leased out to the remaining oyster companies and lost to the public fishery in 1915. Vessels could now be docked at City Point piers which we do today without a constant fear that a storm would break the sandy point barrier beach sending 8 to 12 foot high waves crashing into City Point. That just didn’t happen anymore – that is of course because of the outer breakwaters. Last year Paul Morris, an Aquaculture Technology teacher at The Sound School, gave me a copy of the original Army Corps of Engineer Breakwater construction plans. It is titled “1889 New Haven Harbor and Breakwater Connecticut, Condition of Improvement June 30th 1889. S.K. Houston, Colonel of Engineers US Army.” I thank Paul for his addition to the habitat history of New Haven Harbor. It gives an interesting wave direction process determining the location of the breakwaters.

After a century the public walkway along this shore is back. People now come to City Point again. New Haven Harbor last year (2012) contained millions of blue crabs; Sound School students land striped bass and bluefish on the McNeil Dock; which today the Quinnipiac sail vessel belonging to Schooner, Inc., and Island Rover our research vessel are tied up. The oyster sets the past few years have been very good on leased cleaned and shelled acreage. If Mr. George McNeil could see his favorite shoreline today, he would be pleased, the docks once abandoned have been rebuilt, sharpies ply the shore again and a vibrant City Point remains.

For more detailed account of the decline of New Haven’s Natural Oyster Beds, see the paper titled “New Haven’s Lost Natural Oyster Beds,” written for The Sound School GreenFest, June 4th – 6th 2010 and a modified Capstone proposal both available from Sue Weber at susan.weber@new-haven.k12.ct..us

An excellent account and pictures of Bayview Park the site of the Foote building today is on the City Point neighborhood website.

Tim Visel

The HIFFM IMEP Newsletter is possible by an Inter-District Cooperative Grant (Public Act 94 -1) and regional marine education bulletins can be obtained or accessed on the Adult Education and Outreach directory by accessing the Sound School website:

www.soundschool.com/publications%201.html.

For information about The Sound School website, publications, and / or alumni contacts, please contact Taylor Samuels at taylor.samuels@new-haven.k12.ct.us

The Sound School is a Regional High School Agriculture Science and Technology Center enrolling students from 23 participating Connecticut communities.

Program reports are available upon request. For more information about New Haven Environmental Monitoring Initiative for IMEP reports, please contact Susan Weber, The Sound School Adult Education and Outreach Program Coordinator, at susan.weber@new-haven.k12.ct.us.