Historic George St. Duplex’s Rescue Set

The city’s anti-blight agency now owns and has a plan in place to convert a vacant, historic duplex at the corner of Orchard Street and George Street into six units of new housing as part of a larger effort to bring new affordable housing to vacant lots.

The plan is for 596 and 598 George St., two late 19th-century brownstones that the city purchased from Yale-New Haven Hospital on Feb. 28 for $1. The plan calls for two ground-floor owner-occupied dwellings and four upstairs rental apartments.

Yale took over the property in 2012 as part of its acquisition of the old Saint Raphael Hospital. In 2015 and 2016, Dwight and West River neighbors successfully rallied against the hospital’s plan to demolish the building to make way for a new Habitat for Humanity home-build, arguing instead that the historic property should be preserved by the hospital or a new owner.

In 2017, the city cut a deal with the hospital whereby the city would rehabilitate each property and sell them as two separate three-family residences to buyers who commit to living in each building’s respective ground-floor units for a minimum of ten years, according to Catherine Carbonaro Schroeter, the deputy director of administrative services for the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). The future homes can be purchased by families with incomes up to 100 percent of the area median income, or AMI, which was $88,100 for a family of four as of 2017. 

LCI Project Manager Mark Wilson said the city will allow the new owner-occupants to rent out each building’s two upstairs units to help supplement their income.

“It’s a beautiful historic brownstone,” Schroeter told the Independent late last week. ​“It reminds me of Wooster Square. We’re selling each brownstone as a three-family residence. They have to occupy. That’s what we wanted, and that’s what Yale required: that it be home-owner and not rental.”

She and Wilson said the city’s first order of business is to tarp the roof to prevent further water infiltration and interior damage resulting from a hole in the roof left by an earlier fire. Wilson said the city will be going out to bid for the tarping work next month, and will follow that with interior inspections by the city’s Health Department to see if they will need to do any led or asbestos remediation.

After that, the city will work to repair the building’s exterior, including its roof, windows, and Victorian brickwork. Schroeter and Wilson said the city will be working closely with the New Haven Preservation Trust (NHPT) and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to ensure that the building’s historic attributes, like its arched pocket doors and terracotta ornamentation, are restored and not demolished.

“It’s a very prominent structure,” said John Herzan, the preservation services officer at NHPT. ​“And it’s a very distinctive structure architecturally. We are just beyond thrilled that LCI was able to acquire it, that it will not be torn down, and that it will be repurposed for residential use and preserved. It needs a friend, and this is a good time for LCI to have acquired it.”

He said the two 3,700 square-foot, two-and-a-half story buildings were first constructed around 1885, and singled out the Queen Anne-style portico, porch steps, and elaborate stained glass windows as architecturally unique. The brownstones were once the offices of obstetrician-gynecologists Drs. Bernard Conte and Marianne Beatrice, who were both attending physicians at Yale-New Haven and St. Raphael’s for over four decades.

Herzan said he has encouraged Wilson and LCI to do research at the New Haven Museum to see if they can find any older photographs of the building that may provide clues as to the property’s original design.

Connecticut architectural historian Todd Levine said that the plan of work that the city submitted to the state in November 2017 for this project followed all of the Secretary of the Interior standards for the treatment of historic resources, which is a requirement for all historic rehab projects involving federal or state dollars. He said the city has committed to retaining all of the building’s interior design fabric, including its windows, door trim, baseboard, and chimney pieces, during its gut rehab of the property.

Schroeter said she applied to the state Department of Housing (DOH) in March for $900,000 from the state’s Homeownership Development Projects grant to help fund the rehabilitation of the two brownstones. The state decided not to fund the city’s $1.8 million request for aid for this project in 2017.

Schroeter said she expects to hear back from the state about whether or not New Haven will be awarded the money in September.

Schroeter said that 596 – 598 George St. is one of a handful of development projects that LCI is working on to encourage homeownership on refurbished lots that were once vacant or derelict.

She said the Neighborhood Stabilization Program invested millions of city and federal dollars into a two-block stretch of Putnam Street in the Hill back in 2013 and 2014, converting a desolate stretch of lots and vacant houses into a strip of owner-occupied homes. She said the city built four new buildings and rehabbed three existing buildings, including a two-family home at 137 Putnam St. that the city bought in a foreclosure sale in 2014 for $50,000, rehabilitated, and then sold to a homeowner in 2016 for $220,000.

She and Wilson said the city is currently working on similar projects on Judith Terrace in Fair Haven Heights and Blatchley Avenue in Fair Haven, and has its eyes set on a site at Winchester Avenue and Thompson Street in Newhallville.

Schroeter said the city has already started construction at Judith Terrace, where it plans to build five two-family homes on what are currently vacant lots. She said five foundations are already in the ground, one house is framed and roofed, and one house is half framed. She said LCI plans to have the Judith Terrace project done by June 2019, if not earlier.

Wilson said the city plans to build a single-family home on a lot at 384 Blatchley Ave., and hopes to have shovels in the ground next month.

“We don’t buy houses that are occupied,” Schroeter said. ​“We’re trying to do a couple vacant lots. There’s not much new construction in home ownership in New Haven. That’s a niche that we want to help fill.”