Where New Haven meets Hamden on Whitney Avenue, Edgerton Park keeps the grounds of the Frederick F. Brewster Estate. Imagine the spot in 1909, when industrialist Frederick F. Brewster established the estate and built a new Tudor-style mansion called Edgerton for its edge-of-town location, while Robert Storer Stephenson designed the present landscape that same year. Before Brewster, the site held a Victorian home known as "Ivy Nook.
In 1964 the mansion was demolished, pursuant to Brewster's wishes after the death of his wife, and the property was donated to the city. The grounds later earned recognition: the property was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988; that listing included seven contributing buildings, eight other contributing structures, and one contributing object. Today this public place—variously described in the record as 20 acres and as 22 acres—keeps tangible traces of the estate: the original wall, greenhouses, carriage house, gatehouse, and bridge, along with a large fountain and community gardens.
The Sarah T. Crosby Conservatory in the Community Greenhouses still shelters a rain forest exhibit, a dry landscape with desert plants, and orchids. Notice the original wall, gatehouse, carriage house, and greenhouses still standing, along with the fountain and community gardens beyond them.