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The New Haven Enterprise Corporate Citizen
New Haven City Gas Light Co.
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Business New Haven
1/24/2000
By:
Priscilla Searles
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On June 14, 1847 the General Assembly granted a charter to the New Haven City Gas Light Co. Tallow candles and lamps lit by sperm-whale oil were soon to become a thing of the past. The company sold 4,000 shares of stock in ten days to raise $100,000 to capitalize the business, making it the first utility in New Haven - and one of the first in the nation.
The following year, the first coal-gas plant in the state was erected in New Haven on the north side of St. John Street. With a capacity to generate 40,000 cubic feet per day of carbureted hydrogen gas, the plant burned bituminous coal. The company's first distribution system of approximately four miles went from St. John Street to what is now State Street, south to Chapel and Temple Street and over Temple to George, Crown and College streets. Durrier & Pecks bookstore on Chapel Street was the first New Haven business to use gas and the first private home to use gas was owned by Professor Benjamin Silliman Jr. In 1849, the first gas street lamp appeared.
In 1854, the company became the New Haven Gas Light Co. In 1861, a new coal gas plant was built at Chapel and East streets, with a daily capacity of 500,000 cubic feet. By the 1890s, electricity began to supersede gas as a source of power and the company looked for other uses for the product.
According to the company, the fires of the retort houses of the New Haven Gas Light Co. were never allowed to go out, but were transferred as living coals from plant to plant as the company expanded. In 1967, the Bridgeport Gas Light Co. and the New Haven Gas Light Co. consolidated to form the Southern Connecticut Gas Co., moving into new corporate headquarters in Bridgeport two years later. In 1994, the company consolidated operations activities to a centralized operations center in Orange. In 1999 its parent was purchased by the New York-based Energy East Co.
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