Yesterday James Sinclair – emperor of all things Ivesian, who heroically catalogued all 8000 pages of Charles Ives’s manuscripts – took me on the Ives walking tour of Yale. While a student there Ives lived in Connecticut Hall, then as now the oldest building left on campus, which, because of its age, tended to house the less affluent students. His dorm room was on the second floor, the last two windows on the right:
(By contrast, Cornelius Vanderbilt donated a fancy new dorm to make sure his sons lived there in style, attended by servants.) Ives’s keyboard skills earned him the most coveted church music job in town, organist at the Congregationalist Center Church on the Green:
Years later:
Kyle, I hadn’t thought about New Haven in some time. Now I miss it! Such history. Sometimes it feels as if Ives haunts the halls.
Kyle, while in New Haven, don’t forget to check out Charlie’s High School, Hopkins Grammar School. Like Armando, I, too, am missing New Haven.
Kind of a tangent, but waiting at Stamford’s train station the other day, I was happy to see a Metro-North train labeled “CHARLES IVES” in large letters.