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by Allan Appel | Sep 7, 2008 6:14 pm

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Posted to: Arts

nhihosley%20008.JPG Bill Hosley believes New Haven abandons too much of its everyday treasures — and therefore its cultural history. On a tour of hidden gems at the museum he runs, he came across an object that might help him change that.

The rare item (pictured), from the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire, is carved with various educational nostrums that bring instantly alive student life in acirca 1812 school system, including the enigmatic “Speak the truth and down he goes.”

It was one of scores of treasures, large and small, that emerged from long-closed storerooms at the museum, where Hosley led a group of 20 avid history buffs Saturday afternoon on a behind-the-scenes tour of the institution he runs, the New Haven Museum (formerly the New Haven Colony Historical Society).

The program was intended as a preview of the creation of some 25 percent more gallery space. It was part of a larger plan called “Project Iceberg” designed to make more visible the bottom-dwelling treasures that have been forced into crowded museum storage over the decades, and to enhance and modernize the visitor experience.

nhihosley%20003.JPG The museum has been energized by Hosley’s arrival about two years ago. Attendance has gone up in various categories. Project Iceberg, which will be primarily funded by a $175,000 grant currently pending with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, could be a milestone for the museum. “We need to reach younger people and we need to help foster a value of caring for a sense of place.”

For this director, bringing personal stories to artifacts is what makes them come alive. Hosley’s young volunteer helper Saturday, 13 year-old Bea Alexander, was getting an appreciation of one Henry Eld. Eld was a naval commander in the mid-19th century, whose dress uniform was unearthed. Although apparently almost tiny in stature, he explored the North Pole.

Next to the dress uniform was a sealskin coat that brought him close to his goal. Once you know this, going round and round Eld Street searching desperately for parking cannot be the same again.

Another of the storerooms off the rotunda’s second floor held five hetchels, about six cradles (including a deluxe for twins), and the desk of Noah Webster. The desk, of course, is going to be elevated into display and will be a focal point of a mid-October symposium that the museum is doing with Yale on the New Haven’s lexicographer extraordinaire.

And what’s a hetchel?

nhihosley%20005.JPG Don Menzies was the only fellow who knew, mainly because his 18th Woodbridge house was purchased complete with wheels and other spinning equipment. “A hetchel,” he answered Bill Hosley’s question, “separates the flax fibers out so they can be made into cloth.”

One hetchel will be kept at the museum. The others will be stored or sent along with some of the museum’s other second tier materials, to facilities that Hosley said Yale might be sharing with the museum out at the Bayer campus in West Haven. That will enable more of the museum’s top-flight items, many not viewed in 50 years, to ascend to the top of the iceberg.

For example, such treasures as a rare 1670s New Haven chair. Hosley said that you could tell a New Haven, as opposed, say, to a Branford area chair: Our area’s 17th century carvers left signature desings. Ours favored the scissor scroll pattern.

nhihosley%20007.JPG Then there was this Queen Anne, circa 1740s dresser, decorated with a hand-painted swirling design that Abigail Roth, of New Haven, was admiring. It almost looks like modern art.

Hosley grew most excited when he ushered people into the museum’s photo collection. “This is really one of our crown jewels, more than 100,000 images. Between Yale’s expansion, model cities, and other factors, New Haven was really hit hard between 1925 and 1975. I bet, if we had to, we could reconstruct every block and every destroyed building in New Haven of, say, 1915, with images that we have here. Photos bring things instantly to life.”

nhihosley%20009.JPG Esther Rausch Pope didn’t waste any time sitting down to find the school she went to as a kid, Noah Webster, which was then on York and George.

“My father had a machine shop right here,” she said, pointing to where the Air Rights Garage sits today. “And then here’s where I was born, Grace Hospital, which was there before Yale-New Haven. And right nearby was a whole street, Spruce Street, where we used to play. All gone.”

“When you go to Quebec or Philadelphia, you are constantly surrounded by history,” Hosley said as he brought the behind-the-scenes tour to a close. “And that’s good for the citizens and for the economy. We can do that here.”

nhihosley%20002.JPG Kneeling beside an example either of 19th century maritime ordinance or a petrified armadillo (he knew exactly which), was Hosley sending a broadside across the campaigns of municipal and chamber of commerce marketers? Perhaps.

“If we have the civic will, we really can make New Haven a destination for cultural tourism because we’ve got it all, from Louis’ Lunch to the crypt at Center Church. And this museum can help make it happen. The only place that is marketed like this in all Connecticut is maybe Mystic. But, with these collections and if we rise to the challenge, mind you, maybe we can combine Hartford and New Haven and market an experience, a history trail, without peer.”

Those interested in learning more about Project Iceberg or supporting it with, in Hosley’s words, “time, talent, or treasure,” should reach him by email or at 562-4183.

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