New Haven Independent

The association honored Yale President Rick Levin for his commitment to preserving the trail, landscape designer Diana Balmori for blending the adjoining segment of trail seamlessly into the landscape, and architect Cesar Pelli for creating the building with its glass wall facing the trail. (They’re shown in the above photo starting with second from left. At far left is Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander.)

Nancy Alderman, founder and past president of the Association, spoke before a sizable crowd in a corner of the new, triangular Malone engineering building at Trumbull and Prospect streets, whose glass wall looks out over the recently finished section of the trail below.

Alderman (in photo) gave a brief history of the Farmington Canal, built in the 1820s by Irish immigrants. It was converted to a railroad in 1848 that ran until the mid-1980s, when towns along the 80-mile corridor all the way to Northampton, Mass., began converting it in bits and pieces to a paved recreational trail. Eight miles are complete in Hamden, three more in Cheshire. A fraction of a mile stood alone in New Haven around Science Park for a few years, and now it’s been joined by the newest little piece that goes through a corner of the Yale campus.

“We must note that Yale and the architectural firm of Pelli Clarke and Pelli, had many options for this building site,” Alderman said. “Yale and the architects could have decided to fill in the canal corridor, making a larger building site, but obliterating forever the original path of the canal. And may I say that until Rick Levin came into office, that was the policy of this university. The university not only had that policy, the university would never talk to our organization — all those years. The fact that Yale and the architects together chose the most difficult option and the most environmentally sensitive solution to this building site is why we are here today. The Farmington Canal Rail to Trail Association is celebrating Yale’s commitment to the environment and to the integrity and importance of preserving a piece of their history, as well as that of New Haven.”

“The design of this building was very special and very precious to me,” Pelli (in photo) said in his remarks. “Engineering buildings want to be big, fat rectangles and you have to work very hard to make them fit into a small triangle. But we did, and I believe the building is very efficient and delightful.”

At the end of the presentation, the association’s executive director, Norm Thetford, updated the audience on progress along the 80-mile length of the canal line, from New Haven to Northampton. Twenty-eight miles of the 54 miles of right-of-way in Connecticut are complete and operational, he said, “and within the next few years that number will jump to 32 or 34 depending on the progress.” That hopefully includes finishing the southernmost portion of the trail in Hamden and the northernmost section in New Haven.