New Haven, city in New Haven County, southern Connecticut, at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River on Long Island Sound. Once a prosperous manufacturing center, New Haven now has an economy based on four sectors: biotechnology, health care, higher education, and arts and entertainment. Yale University (1701) commands a central position in the city’s economic and cultural life. One of the country’s premier educational institutions, the university is New Haven’s largest employer. The school is also integral to the city’s shift from manufacturing to knowledge-based industry. New Haven is a deep-water port and a transportation hub. The United States Coast Guard headquarters for Long Island Sound is located in the city. Tweed New Haven Airport provides commercial air links to nearby metropolitan airports.

While New Haven is closely identified with Yale University, it is also home to Southern Connecticut State University (1893), Albertus Magnus College (1925), and a community college. The University of New Haven (1920) is in nearby West Haven, and Quinnipiac College (1929) in nearby Hamden. New Haven has a variety of performing-arts facilities and museums. Associated with Yale are the Peabody Museum of Natural History, with a dinosaur fossil collection; Yale Center for British Art, which surveys the development of British art and life; the Yale University Art Gallery, with an extensive collection by European masters; and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, containing a Gutenberg Bible, which is one of the first examples of a book printed with a movable metal type. The Museum of the New Haven Colony Historical Society details the city’s development.

Based in New Haven are symphony, chamber, and philharmonic orchestras, a ballet company, and theater groups. Nature and recreation areas are located at East Rock Park and West Rock Ridge State Park, both with lofty red sandstone ridges. New Haven’s central green, which dates from the 17th century, is bordered by three early 19th-century churches. Also of interest are Grove Street Cemetery, which contains the graves of lexicographer Noah Webster and inventor Eli Whitney. New Haven is home to an annual international tennis tournament.

Adriaen Block, a mariner employed by the Dutch East India Company, originally charted New Haven harbor in 1614. The first European settlement, known as Quinnipiac, was established in 1638 on land purchased from Native Americans by English followers of Puritanism. In 1640 it was renamed New Haven, either for “new harbor” or for Newhaven, England. It was an independent, theocratic colony, or a colony governed by officials who believed in divine guidance, until it was absorbed by Connecticut Colony in 1665. In 1784 New Haven was incorporated as a city; together with Hartford, it served as joint capital of Connecticut from 1701 to 1875. With its natural harbor, New Haven was a busy 18th-century maritime center possessing a large colonial and West Indian trade.

In 1779, during the American Revolution, the town was raided and partially burned by British forces. Aided by enormous immigration throughout the 19th century, New Haven became an important manufacturing hub. Eli Whitney introduced the principle of interchangeable parts here, and other inventors, notably Charles Goodyear, who developed a workable form of rubber, worked in the city.

New Haven undertook extensive urban renewal projects during the 1950s, one of the first U.S. cities to do so. The city has received national attention for its efforts to solve its urban problems; the nation’s first antipoverty program began in New Haven in 1962. Still, poverty, crime, and a deteriorating infrastructure continued to plague the city into the 1990s. In the 1990s the city gained widespread attention for its Livable City Initiative, a neighborhood revitalization program. Among its features are city employees delivering services to residents from community-based police substations.

New Haven covers a land area of 49 sq km (19 sq mi), with a mean elevation of 3 m (10 ft). According to the 2000 census, whites are 43.5 percent of the population, blacks 37.4 percent, Asians 3.9 percent, Native Americans 0.4 percent, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders 0.1 percent. The remainder are of mixed heritage or did not report race. Hispanics, who may be of any race, are 21.4 percent of the people. Population 126,109 (1980); 130,474 (1990); 123,626 (2000); 124,001 (2006).