by | Apr 24, 2024 8:43 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
Parent Raquel Sanchez checks out the headlines during PLTI media literacy lesson.
Raquel Sanchez paged through recent issues of the New Haven Register and La Voz Hispana, on the lookout for opinion essays and articles about families — as part of a class teaching parents about the importance of media literacy for themselves, their kids, and others.
by | Apr 22, 2024 11:13 am | Comments (0)
Amartya De
Sequoia.
The photograph is from northern California, and photographer Amartya De said it was his roommate’s favorite of his pictures at the time because “it shows the landscape.” It was a city, but not really a city; it was a place close to the redwoods. De was there from Calcutta, learning how to become an artist, and learning that the practice of making art and the practice of surviving weren’t all that different.
by | Apr 18, 2024 4:04 pm | Comments (3)
Laura Glesby photo
11-year-old Avery with her favorite Black Raspberry Newhall Street soap.
Bassett Street smells like lemongrass and poppy seeds to 11-year-old Kauren, now that her favorite sweet-citrusy soap is up for sale in honor of the street where she goes to school.
Continue reading ‘Soaps Honor Newhallville At Kids' Black Wall Street’
by | Apr 3, 2024 3:57 pm | Comments (0)
Laura Glesby Photo
Dr. Ann Garrett Robinson, the future namesake of Dixwell & Argyle?
The corner of Dixwell and Argyle might soon bear Dr. Ann Garrett Robinson’s name, in honor of a beloved champion of local Black history who, in 89 years of life so far, has made a mark on history herself.
Continue reading ‘Won't You Be My Neighbor, "Dr. Robinson Way"?’
by | Apr 1, 2024 9:11 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photos
New Haven Links' inaugural cohort for winter session of Tea Time With Teens.
Maya McFadden Photo
The inaugural cohort of the New Haven Links’ “Tea Time with Teens” celebrated its first five middle school graduates.
by | Mar 29, 2024 11:50 am | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen file photo
794 Dixwell, now owned by Clifford Beers.
A mental healthcare provider has closed on its purchase of a former charter school property in Newhallville, making official a two-year-long effort by neighbors to stop that site from becoming a methadone clinic.
Continue reading ‘Clifford Beers Closes On $2.7M Purchase Of Ex-School On Dixwell From APT’
by | Mar 22, 2024 3:14 pm | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman Photo
Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op volunteer Julia Nojeim fixing Alfred Wicker's flat tire.
Angus Lamont, Mayor Justin Elicker, Catherine Lindsay, and Steve Winter look on as Doreen Abubakar cuts the ribbon.
Agitating the atmosphere: That’s what Doreen Abubakar called the opening of the Newhallville Bike Box, a new free bike repair station on Shelton Avenue and Hazel Street.
“We live in a place where there is no library, no medical institution, and no community space where people can gather,” Abubakar, founder of the Community Placemaking Engagement Network, told the spirited group of 30 at a festive, if wind-buffeted, ribbon-cutting ceremony.
by | Mar 22, 2024 11:08 am | Comments (10)
Maya McFadden Photo
Lincoln-Bassett parent Stacy Leslie: school pick-up is hectic.
Speed bumps are on the way to Newhallville. What, neighbors asked, about the schools?
Continue reading ‘Newhallville Presses Zinn On Speed Bumps, School Traffic Safety’
by | Mar 21, 2024 3:46 pm | Comments (4)
From "mass-level instruments of death" to homes and community: Matt Pugliese, Alder Kim Edwards, Alder Troy Streater, Eric Steinberg, Alex Twining, Arlevia Samuel, David Silverstone, Jake Pine and Mayor Justin Elicker break ground on Winchester Green.
As excavators pushed dirt from side to side at 315 Winchester Ave., city officials and housing developers dug shovels into a picture-planned pile of rocks to symbolically break ground on the mixed-use development that will one day be called the Winchester Green.
Continue reading ‘"Winchester Green" Grows Into Construction Zone’
by | Mar 15, 2024 2:03 pm | Comments (3)
Laura Glesby Photo
State Rep. Robyn Porter helps serve food to neighbors and fellow politicians.
An all-boys charter school is gearing up to open this fall in a stately Dixwell Avenue building that neighbors stopped from becoming a methadone clinic two years ago.
Continue reading ‘Newhallville Celebrates Community Organizing Win’
by | Mar 8, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Laureate Little with King/Robinson students.
Fifth-grader Aly Gaye knew where to start when New Haven’s poet laureate asked him to write verses about himself: My power lies in my brain, in my smarts.
by | Mar 4, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
Hugh Edwards celebrates auction win with Karlyn and Chris Duncan.
Hugh Edwards returned home to Newhallville — and left with a chance to revive a dilapidated home just a few blocks away from where he grew up.
by | Feb 29, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (8)
Honda Smith and Diane X. Brown.
Diane X. Brown and Honda Smith grew up two blocks from each other in Newhallville during the 1960s and 1970s in families steeped in politics and a New Haven pulsing with the Black Panthers, racial unrest, and a burgeoning sense of possibility.
Brown, 66, became the first African American librarian in New Haven in 2006, transforming the Stetson branch into a thriving community and cultural hub. Smith, 59, a retired city public works employee and longtime civic activist, took the reins as West Hills alder in 2020 upon her retirement from a three-decade career working for the city government. She’s known for, among other initiatives, The Shack, which she revitalized into a thriving intergenerational community center on Valley Street.
The Independent sat down with Brown and Smith at The Shack to get their takes on observing Black History Month in 2024 New Haven.
Continue reading ‘Living Black History Today: 2 Leaders Look Back, To The Present’
by | Feb 28, 2024 3:05 pm | Comments (2)
Marcus Harvin and volunteers deliver meals to Varick Warming Center.
“This was our vision in prison,” said Marcus Harvin, as he led his team with boxes of meals past a queue of people waiting for the doors of Dixwell’s Varick A.M.E. Zion Warming Center to open.
by | Feb 28, 2024 12:14 pm | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen Photo
CMT Chair Kim Harris: How does the neighborhood benefit?
How will local bids for geothermal and political power translate into a more empowered Newhallville community?
That question arose repeatedly at the latest gathering of the Newhallville Community Management Team.
Continue reading ‘Neighbors Turn Up Political, Geothermal Heat’
by | Feb 28, 2024 9:30 am | Comments (8)
Elijah Johnson with students at King/Robinson.
Maya McFadden Photos
Elijah Johnson walked into King/Robinson School classroom in his United Airlines pilot uniform — on a mission to inspire some of the students one day to take flight.
by | Feb 22, 2024 3:09 pm | Comments (36)
Nora Grace-Flood
91 Shelton Ave. to stay deteriorated on the outside ...
... and musically inspired on the inside.
City Plan commissioners killed a request to turn a dilapidated former factory serving as local artist studios into storage units — after deciding the development sounded like “dead space.”
by | Feb 12, 2024 1:43 pm | Comments (29)
Contributed Photo
Sheila Harris: A "social butterfly" whom her daughter believes the police could have saved.
Sheila Harris was murdered by her domestic abuser minutes after five police officers left her home, and hours after she arrived, scratched up, at police headquarters to report a stolen gun.
Now Harris’ daughter Mercedes Harris is suing the city and 13 officers, arguing the police should have done more to protect her mom on the night of Aug. 19, 2023.
Continue reading ‘Suit: Cops Failed To Stop Domestic Homicide’
by | Feb 12, 2024 9:13 am | Comments (3)
Lisa Reisman Photo
David Daniels at author talk at Stetson Library.
The Sunday, Aug. 21, 1994, edition of the Connecticut Post pictures a young Black man in police blues holding a hangman’s noose. The man was David Daniels, a police officer. The noose was left on his patrol car.
by | Feb 8, 2024 4:02 pm | Comments (14)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
You may stay? Musicians at 91 Shelton.
Developers returned to the City Plan Commission with a promise: If they get permission to transform a Shelton Avenue industrial building into self-storage units, the artists currently working there can stay.
by | Feb 8, 2024 2:25 pm | Comments (11)
Bryan Ramirez-Guttierez's reserved seat at the Hillhouse High graduation he never got to attend.
Police have made arrests in a pair of hit-and-runs that caused the deaths of two New Haveners, including 17-year-old Bryan Ramirez-Guttierez last February.
by | Feb 5, 2024 2:10 pm | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman Photo
fREsh-taurant crew at Pitts Chapel; Marcus Harvin, in yellow shirt, left center.
(Updated) You can speak all you want into somebody’s ear. If their stomach is growling, they can’t hear it.
Those were the words of Marcus Harvin, the visionary founder of Newhallville fREshSTARTs, at Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church on Friday night. The occasion was the grand opening of the fREsh-taurant, a food recovery initiative that will provide free hot, nutritious meals for the community, either eat-in or take-out, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening. Everyone is welcome.
by | Feb 1, 2024 12:46 pm | Comments (53)
Laura Glesby Photo
Carlota Clark at Wednesday evening's open house at Science Park.
A rendering from Pine's presentation: Apartments up to $4,500 a month on Winchester Ave.
As Science Park developers presented renderings of a housing complex soon to rise on Winchester Ave., Carlota Clark wondered if one of the 283 apartments would someday be hers.
by | Jan 25, 2024 4:15 pm | Comments (21)
Nora Grace-Flood Photos
Kennies Earl: Not "invisible."
Mother Juniper members Lindsay Skedgell and Christian Abbott: Jamming conversion plans.
Mother Juniper frontwoman Lindsay Skedgell unplugged from her Vox AC15 and tuned into Zoom from a “vacant” ex-factory building to send developers a message: 91 Shelton is far from empty.
Skedgell was among dozens of artists who banded together to flood the City Plan Commission’s Zoom room after hearing earlier that day that their studio space, a five-story former factory building at 91 Shelton Ave., is slated for sale to a self-storage company.
Continue reading ‘91 Shelton Studios Smash Storage Space Sale’
by | Jan 15, 2024 11:47 am | Comments (1)
The Q House is celebrating the 100 years that have passed since the community fixture first opened its doors in 1924.
The space will be hosting events throughout 2024, which can be read about here, to honor Q House history and strengthen its current community. Below, we’ve included a letter sent by the Q House Centennial Committee with more details.