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Allan Appel |
Jan 21, 2025 12:03 pm
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Thomas Breen file photo
Judge Arterton at a citizenship ceremony on the Green.
No, the proprietors of the Green are absolutely not against changing with the times. Quite the opposite, as long as the future changes reflect the values of the past and the common good is served.
That’s one of the main takeaways from a conversation with Judge Janet Bond Arterton, chair since 2007 of the Committee of the Proprietors, a self-perpetuating quintet that shares control of the look and uses of the Green with the city.
The Green, as drawn in 1879 by Bailey & Hazen. Note the state house on the Upper Green, behind the Center Church, built in 1831 and demolished in 1889.
And the view from 1824, as engraved by Doolittle.
From a “market place” to a burial ground to a venue for government and education and worship, the Green has seen many different uses over the years.
“However, the one constant over four centuries there is also that the space has been for the public good.”
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Laura Glesby |
Jan 8, 2025 4:49 pm
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(9)
Paul Bass file photo
Parks Chair Belowsky: No longer term-limited by mortality.
The Board of Alders unanimously voted to uproot the parks commission — along with its lifetime appointees — and compost it into a new board with limited terms.
“The Green is big enough, gracious enough, generous enough to tolerate many different people.”
And public space — well, “public space is not always fun.” That’s kind of the point.
So argues Elihu Rubin, a Yale architecture professor and documentarian of the Green, as he cautioned against too many permanent changes to the city’s great public square at a time when a redesign is on the horizon.
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Thomas Breen |
Jan 2, 2025 11:31 am
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(1)
Laura Glesby file photo
The Edgewood Park Midbridge, back in January 2023.
The city’s long-in-the-works effort to replace a deteriorating footbridge in the middle of Edgewood Park took a big step forward, after the City Plan Commission signed off on the state-funded project.
Maddie LaRose (at right in above photo) helped New Haven ring in 2025 with face paint, as the city revived a “First Night”-style, family-friendly gathering.
What about Mary? The gravestone of 3-year-old Mary Hillhouse Oswald preserved in Center Church on the Green's crypt.
When the city unveiled a proposal to build a fountain and a “children’s garden” on the upper half of the New Haven Green, Nicholas Mignanelli had a question: What about the eight to ten thousand people buried inches beneath the ground?
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Jamil Ragland |
Dec 19, 2024 7:00 am
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Two friends help each other skate on the wet ice
Winterfest Hartford Bushnell Park Hartford December 18, 2024
Winterfest is the free ice rink located in Bushnell Park, right next to the Pump House Gallery. In its 14th year, Winterfest begins the day after Thanksgiving and runs through the first week of January. Almost 40,000 people come out to skate in the six weeks the rink is open.
The slightly warmer-than-average day had transitioned into a drizzly evening by the time I made it to the rink, but I knew people would be out skating regardless. Winterfest has been an unmitigated success since its inception, and the small but dedicated crowd skating in the rain represented newcomers holding onto each other for dear life, and veterans zipping along the ice and hydroplaning across the puddles that were forming.
City government’s newly un-merged parks department has a new director, a Yale forestry school grad who most recently worked in the public greenspaces of Chicago.
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Nathaniel Rosenberg |
Oct 18, 2024 12:03 pm
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Nathaniel Rosenberg photo
Deputy CAO Rebecca Bombero and City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli pitch city-Albertus Magnus deal.
The Albertus Magnus women’s hockey team might soon have their own locker room at Ralph Walker Ice Rink, pending approval of a new five-year agreement between the city and the local Catholic college.
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Maya McFadden |
Jul 17, 2024 11:37 am
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Maya McFadden Photos
Youth@Work high schoolers bring art to city parks ...
... and work to paint over inappropriate messages like "fuck it, fuck you."
Garfield the cat and a Hillhouse Academics Smurf popped up on two electrical boxes less than a mile apart — as local high schoolers hustled to paint over profanity-laden graffiti in city parks and street corners, in an effort to beautify New Haven this summer.
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Maya McFadden |
Jul 12, 2024 9:36 am
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Maya McFadden Photos
Quanisha Morrison helps her cousin with arts and crafts ...
... at city's first Family Fun Day of the summer.
Brothers Logan and Mason Bacote enjoyed free ice cream that dribbled down their faces. Rasheem Jr. took a bite of a freshly made slice of pizza alongside his dad Rasheem Miller. And four-year-old Winter was gifted his first ever bicycle.
“Prepare your minds,” Marquis Brantley announced to his squad of six young athletes, “to crab.” He crouched down on all fours, alternating between his left and right limbs as he “crabbed” to the opposite side of Bowen Field.
“Just because I can do it fast doesn’t mean that you should, too. My hands are a burning mess, so slow down. Feel every moment.”
As Olympians across the globe prepare in advance of the hotly contested 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Brantley trained the next generation of local athletic excellence on Wednesday at their home turf at 175 Crescent St., adjacent to Hillhouse High School.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 12, 2024 2:00 pm
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Thomas Breen photo
Youth & Rec’s Gwen Williams and Ronnie Huggins, ready for summer.
More than 700 young New Haveners have above-minimum-wage jobs waiting for them this summer if they accept employment offers from the city’s youth and rec department — thanks to a recent bump in funding for the city’s Youth @ Work program.
Madison Mcgregor and Karriema Peters: "A natural beauty" to the Mill River underpass (pictured below).
Among the weeds and overgrown vegetation of a highway underpass off of State Street, Achievement First Amistad High School juniors Madison Mcgregor and Karriema Peters couldn’t help but see potential.
The soil, still damp and moist from a recent downpour, could make fertile land for a community garden in the future. What type of foods they would grow is still up for debate.
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Allan Appel |
May 17, 2024 10:33 am
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Allan Appel photo
Friends of Quarry Park friends Jane Coppock and Tracy Blanford.
A letter, which should have been alarming, arrived at the Parks Department.
It described a growing, layered mound of more than 5,000 square feet of dumped junk like mattresses, refrigerators, old play equipment and construction debris encroaching from private backyards into the public park land of Quarry Park Preserve in Fair Haven Heights.
That letter was dated February 28, 2002!
After more than 20 years, Tracey Blanford, who heads the Friends of Quarry Park Preserve and was the author of that letter, showed up to a parks commission meeting on Wednesday night.
She was polite and civil, and also simmering with two decades of frustrated advocacy over how to get the city to help keep the park clean.
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Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen |
Apr 26, 2024 4:14 pm
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Laura Glesby Photo
Alex Nieves checks out a freshly-cleaned portable toilet on Thursday afternoon.
An accumulation of feces, old clothes, and drug paraphernalia prompted the city to increase the number of portable restrooms on the New Haven Green from two to six, as city officials search for a more permanent bathroom solution.
Only one kind of grass allowed for public mower job hopefuls.
City of New Haven job posting
Pre-employment drug test required for seasonal parks caretaker job.
If you want to make $18 an hour cutting grass in the city’s parks this summer, then you better not smoke grass before applying for the job.
Because New Haven requires prospective seasonal parks workers to pass a drug test, including for marijuana, even though recreational cannabis is now legal statewide.
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Kamini Purushothaman |
Feb 29, 2024 2:58 pm
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(21)
Tom Breen Photo
Round 2's coming: Jovon Ladson navigates concrete quarter pipe added in the previous round of skateboarder-city-designed renovations.
Skateboarders young and old envisioned stairs, an awning, and 24/7 lights as they met with city officials to map out a plan for a $250,000 renovation of their park.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 31, 2024 9:40 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Davis and Burgess.
On Tuesday morning, Peter Davis, a volunteer river keeper with the city parks department, and fellow volunteer David Burgess were over the edge of the slope off Diamond Street in Beaver Hills, lugging a dilapidated couch out of the woods. Around them was a thin carpet of other discarded objects. Among the trash bags were a fan, a decaying rug, a mattress, a rusting wheelchair.
It was a lot of garbage. Davis and Burgess were taking it one piece at a time.
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Laura Glesby |
Jan 30, 2024 3:13 pm
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(8)
X'Nique suggests to City Engineer Giovanni Zinn that city prioritize shade and sensory play.
A tire swing. A skate park. “A lot of butterflies.” And toys promoting “sensory play.”
Neighborhood children eagerly offered those visions for a planned redesign of Kensington Playground, following years of adult-dominated debates over the future of the park.
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Allan Appel |
Jan 29, 2024 10:03 am
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Allan Appel Photo
Anthropology major Chris Kowalski (above) and Aaron Goode (below) de-vine by Beaver Brook.
Brian Slattery Photo
Clip high, clip low, create a window. Also don’t be a Tarzan and pull on those cut vines lest you disturb insect habitats or the birds high in the trees above.
Those were among the illuminating arboricultural tips offered for some serious de-vining of New Haven’s invasive-threatened native oaks, maples, sycamores, and hackberry trees growing on a beautiful but under-loved patch of city-owned forested greenspace.
