James Dwight Dana House, New Haven, Connecticut:
At 24 Hillhouse Avenue is one of Yale’s many historic buildings. This Italianate home was designed by New Haven architect Henry Austin and completed in 1849. The house was built for James Dwight Dana and his bride Henrietta Silliman by her father, Benjamin Silliman, one of Yale’s first professors of science. Dana (1813–95) was Silliman’s protégé and son-in-law. In 1862, Dana produced the Manual of Geology, the first major work to describe the study of geology as an investigation of landforms and minerals.
The house was purchased by Yale University in 1962. Then the site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 for its association with James Dwight Dana. His former home is a part of the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District, which was defined in 1985 to extend south of Trumbull Street to include this property. The idyllic estate is currently in use as Yale’s Department of Statistics & Data Science.
