State Signs Off On Historic House Move

A developer’s plan to move a 200-year-old house several dozen feet up Orange Street won a key state recommended approval — paving the way for a seven-story apartment building slated to be built atop an adjacent downtown parking lot.

That recommended approval from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) was a featured topic of discussion during the latest monthly meeting of the city’s Historic District Commission.

The virtual meeting was held online via the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

The historic house in question is the William Pinto House at 275 Orange St. The two-story house was built circa 1810 and has ties to some of the earliest Jewish settlers to New Haven, as well as to famed early 19th-century inventor Eli Whitney.

The Federal-style building also sits on a lot where 59 Elm Street Partners LLC, a New Rochelle, N.Y.-based holding company owned by Gerald Seligsohn, won City Plan Commission approval last winter to build a new seven-story, 102-unit market rate apartment complex.

Thanks to the advocacy of local historic preservationists, the City Plan Commission included a condition of approval for the project’s site plan that the developer use ​“commercially reasonable efforts” to maintain the Pinto House’s current historic listing with the National Register of Historic Places.

During the August HDC meeting, local historic district commissioners celebrated a recent decision by SHPO’s State Historic Preservation Review Board that bodes well for the Pinto House retaining its official, national historic status — even if the building is picked up and moved 87 feet away across an adjacent parking lot, as the developer plans to do.

“They put a stamp of approval on the relocation,” HDC member Susan Godshall (pictured) said about SHPO’s vote.

HDC Chair Trina Learned described the SHPO decision as ​“generally good news.”

Jenny Fields Scofield, the state’s National Register & Architectural Survey coordinator, confirmed in a recent email to the Independent that SHPO’s historic preservation board did indeed vote to maintain the listed status of the building even if it is moved several dozen feet away.

The National Park Service in Washington D.C. must now review the relocation application, Scofield said, before the developer can know with absolute certainty that the Pinto House will keep its historic listing upon being moved.

“The State Historic Preservation Office’s and State Historic Preservation Review Board’s only role in this project is to review whether or not the building will retain enough of its historic design and materials to remain eligible for National Register listing during the move,” Fields wrote.

Based on their review, and on a developer-commissioned archaeological survey of the site that found that historic artifacts are not likely still present in the building’s immediate vicinity (see more below), the state decided that the Pinto House could be moved while retaining its official historic characteristics.

Scofield said she expects a response from the National Park Service within 45 days, during which time the federal agency will post a notice in the Federal Register.

Local attorney Jim Segaloff (pictured), who represents the developer, heralded SHPO’s decision as marking the beginning of the end of a ​“time consuming, arduous” process that has resulted in ​“considerable time lost by the developer.”

Nevertheless, he said in a recent email to the Independent, the developer is committed to using its best efforts to maintain the building’s historic listing, per the City Plan Commission condition of approval.

Segaloff also said the developer is still planning to build the seven-story, 102-unit apartment complex as originally envisioned and approved.

“They remain enthused and anxious to get started,” he wrote. ​“Finally, it appears that the process of obtaining approval to retain the Pinto home on the National Historic Register is drawing to a conclusion.”

Mapping Development On Orange Street

The ​“archaeological sensitivity assessment” prepared for 59 Elm Street Partners LLC by the Storrs-based firm Public Archaeology Survey Team, Inc. includes much more than just a conclusion that there are likely no ​“significant archaeological deposits” that might be adversely affected by the Pinto House’s move.

The 30-page report, which can be read in full here, also includes a wealth of historic, architectural, and cartographic detail on the past 210 years of that stretch of Orange Street between Elm and Court Streets.

The Pinto House is ​“the best-preserved extant example of the locally rare, gable-to-street form of the early 19th-century frame architecture,” the report contends, quoting a 1985 local architectural study. And it wasn’t always flanked by three parking lots, as is it now. It used to be at the center of a densely developed block that dates back centuries.

“There is excellent historical mapping available for the Pinto House current site and proposed neighboring relocation site,” the report reads.

On the 1748 Wadsworth Map of New Haven, Orange Street had yet to be laid out and there are no buildings on located where the Pinto House currently is or on the proposed relocation site.

On an 1817 map of Orange Street, however, the Pinto House is now visible in its current location.

The Whiteford 1852 map does not clearly show the Pinto House, ​“but it does show dense development of the block.”

And a detail of the 1879 Bailey and Hazen birds-eye view, ​“although oblique, provides a look at just how closely packed the area around the Pinto House had become in terms of buildings.”

The next map up is the 1886 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, which shows the Pinto House with a single building between it and the proposed relocation site. The Sanborn maps from 1901 and 1923 show the same layout.

The latter map, updated in 1951, showed that the building between the Pinto House and the relocation site was now vacant and converted to ​“auto parking.” And a 1934 Fairfield aerial map shows that same ​“auto parking” lot condition.

“Based on the historical map evidence, the area surrounding the extant house site was urbanized and developed throughout the 19th century,” the report reads. ​“In the second half and third quarter of the century the proposed relocation area appears to have been built upon, but that building was
removed before 1886, and by the 1950s the current site was surrounded by a parking lot, and the proposed relocation site was also paved over.”

Building construction and removal, followed by paving, defined the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century around the Pinto House and the relocation site, the report reads.

“Pinto House archaeological deposits, during its early 19th-century period, may have been relatively near the house, but as time went on and the house itself was expanded, and the immediate area was developed and paved, these deposits were likely compromised by construction and demolition, and the placement of fill to enable paving over the entire circumference of the Pinto House.”

Therefore, the report concludes, it’s doubtful that intact Pinto House artifacts remain in the immediate vicinity of the house or on the lot.

How To Pick Up And Move A House

The report also includes a section on how exactly the Pinto House will be moved 87 feet from its current location at 275 Orange to its new potential home at 283 Orange.

First, the modern brick addition at the read of the building will be demolished. That addition was built in 1987.

Prior to the move, a new basement/foundation measuring eight feet by 28 feet by 50 feet will be dug on the relocation site and footings will be poured.

The project mason will remove the red sandstone foundation stones at the front of the Pinto House, and those stones will be stored for re-use in the same locations in the new foundation of the relocated house.

“The contractor will then assemble ​‘a table of steel’ under the building, with main I‑beams extending the length of the building, with cross steel
inserted approximately every seven feet,” the report reads.

Once that steel table is in place, the building will be lifted off its foundation by a unified jacking system of hydraulic jacks, placed on ​“purpose-built rollers called skates,” and rolled up the block.

“The historical materials from the house will be incorporated into the new foundation exterior as a veneer,” the report reads. ​“The house will be lowered onto the new foundation using the same hydraulic unified jacking system that raised it.”