by | Jul 20, 2020 9:22 am | Comments (18)
Ko Lyn Cheang photo
Paglino petitioning at farmers’ market.
Wearing a bright blue mask emblazoned with the words, “Medicare for All,” Justin Paglino wandered among shoppers of healthful greens to pitch them on helping a Green candidate run Congress on a universal health care platform.
by | Jul 15, 2020 4:41 pm | Comments (2)
UI
Section of UI’s construction plans.
For the next few months, parking around Wooster Square will be tighter than usual thanks to a United Illuminating (UI) construction project that began Monday.
by | Jul 15, 2020 4:40 pm | Comments (3)
Maya McFadden Photo
With adjustments made for the pandemic, LEAP is running its annual free summer program this summer for 340 children and teens in part virtually, in part in-person.
by | Jul 5, 2020 12:15 pm | Comments (12)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
On Independence Day, 15 indigenous people gathered in Wooster Square Park by the stone pedestal that until 11 days earlier had supported a statue of Christopher Columbus.
Continue reading ‘Indigenous Ritual “Cleanses” Wooster Park’
by | Jul 1, 2020 10:48 am | Comments (1)
Leigh Busby Photos
During the removal of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square on June 24, there was a moment that crystallized what it was all about. As city workers secured the ropes around the statue to lift it off its pedestal, it occurred to a few in the crowd that it looked a lot like a lynching, and in that visual echo, they found some restitution.
Continue reading ‘Photographer Chronicles The City’s Upheaval’
by | Jun 29, 2020 3:37 pm | Comments (15)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Good-bye Columbus; who’s next?
Twenty-four New Haveners will begin deciding what will replace the 4,000-pound statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square Park.
Continue reading ‘Committee Named To Consider Columbus Replacement’
by | Jun 26, 2020 6:49 pm | Comments (50)
Thomas Breen photos
Los Fidel and Mayor Elicker talk it out in Wooster Square Park.
Towards the end of Friday’s group conversation.
Two days after getting attacked at the removal of a Christopher Columbus statue, Los Fidel returned to Wooster Square Park — and ended up face to face with Mayor Justin Elicker for a heated two hour-long discussion.
by | Jun 26, 2020 5:36 pm | Comments (24)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Columbus statue being removed on Wednesday.
Time capsule reportedly buried at time of 1892 erection.
by | Jun 26, 2020 1:22 pm | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen Photo
Statue removal supporters and opponents square off Wednesday.
When America’s culture war and social-justice movement came to Wooster Square this week, it landed at the heart of a race for Congress.
Continue reading ‘Columbus Statue Removal Becomes Campaign Issue’
by | Jun 26, 2020 12:22 pm | Comments (15)
Brian Slattery Photo
On Friday morning a display appeared in front of the pedestal that until two days earlier held up the statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square
It was put there shortly after 10 a.m. by Malcolm Welfare, Ricquel Pratt, and Steve Nardini of the Lineage Group. Within minutes of the display appearing, passersby stopped to check it out. There, they learned about William Lanson, a Black engineer and entrepreneur who, in the 19th century, escaped from slavery to become a pioneer in the city’s development.
by | Jun 25, 2020 10:10 am | Comments (0)
The following photos were taken Wednesday morning and early afternoon during the seven hours of protests, counter-protests, tension, anger, and celebration surrounding the city’s removal of the Christopher Columbus statue from Wooster Square Park. The images are presented in chronological order. Click here for a full story on the day’s events.
Continue reading ‘Wooster Square Park, June 24, 5:30 AM-1 PM’
by | Jun 24, 2020 5:35 pm | Comments (125)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Columbus removed from pedestal, en route to undisclosed location.
Thomas Breen Photo
Pro-removal activists cheer the moment.
At 1 p.m. Wednesday, after a week of debate and a morning of sometimes violent conflict, a city-hired crew removed the statue of Christopher Columbus from Wooster Square Park.
A screaming match turned into a brief racial fight in the park earlier Wednesday morning as a crowd waited for a late crane to arrive to remove the statue of the 15th-century explorer.
Watch the altercation above. (A Columbus statue supporter threw the first punch at around the 4:10 mark in the video.)
The crane finally arrived hours later. Watch live in the above video as, amid protests and singing and chants of “Take it down!,” a crew removes it.
Thomas Breen Photo
East Haven man detained for attacking pro-removal activist.
by | Jun 24, 2020 5:33 pm | Comments (28)
Thomas Breen photos
Columbus statute standoff in Wooster Square earlier Wednesday. Below: Elicker at City Hall presser.
Mayor Justin Elicker spent Wednesday in his office at City Hall as defenders and critics of Wooster Square’s now-removed Christopher Columbus statue engaged in a tense seven-hour standoff less than a mile away.
The mayor defended that decision in an afternoon press conference as avoiding playing a “not productive” role. He also responded to the question of why the city waited a week to take down the statue in the first place, giving mostly out-of-town opponents of the move time to organize opposition.
by | Jun 19, 2020 10:46 am | Comments (24)
Thomas Breen photo
The current Christopher Columbus statue in Wooster Square.
(Opinion) The Christopher Columbus statue in Wooster Square Park is being removed.
In its stead, we should honor a Black entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in building a neighborhood that is now super-majority white. That man’s name was William Lanson.
Continue reading ‘Opinion: Replace Columbus With King Lanson’
by | Jun 18, 2020 9:51 am | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen Photo
August expiration date: The Wooster Square Columbus Statue.
New Haven’s Parks Commission plans to remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Wooster Square Park within 60 days and look for a possible new home.
Continue reading ‘Parks Commission Votes To Remove Columbus Statue’
by | Jun 17, 2020 6:12 pm | Comments (6)
Urbane NewHaven
Townhouse-style apartments planned for the corner of Mill River and Humphrey Streets.
Twelve new homes may sprout near the Mill River where an empty brick garage now stands.
Developer Eric O’Brien of Urbane NewHaven presented his plan for 156 – 158 Humphrey St. to the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on Tuesday to praise from neighbors. Four of the 12 homes would be deed-restricted to be affordable.
by | Jun 17, 2020 3:20 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
The Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen food pantry.
Crosswalks can wait. People have lost jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic and are hungry now.
That logic drove the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on Monday to reverse a previous vote and give all $20,000 of their Neighborhood Public Improvement Project (NPIP) dollars to the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK).
Continue reading ‘Downtown Democracy Dollars Directed To Food, Not Crosswalks’
by | May 27, 2020 10:45 am | Comments (3)
Roderick Topping Photos
In one photograph among the six grouped together, the picture is just of a brick wall. But the diagonal light both sparks the existing pattern in the masonry and makes it more complicated. Those strong diagonals then make their appearance again, but this time as an architectural feature. Then it happens again, only now the diagonal is pure shadow, of a spiked fence, with a bicycle and a hydrant to bear witness.
“It was one of those bright. sunny days,” said photographer Roderick Topping of the first image. The light drew his eye to the pattern in the brickwork. But as the photographs in the open-air show at Studio Duda on Wooster Street show, Topping’s eye is drawn to the details of the Elm City nearly everywhere in town he goes. His camera lets us see what he sees; he shows us the city again.
by | Apr 22, 2020 1:43 pm | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
Battelle’s VP Jeff Rose with U.S. Sens. Blumenthal and Murphy.
A medical grade N95 mask.
Twenty workers at a Wooster Square factory have started cleaning N95 masks so that three dozen hospitals, and counting, from throughout the region can reuse the critical protective equipment as they treat patients with Covid-19.
by | Apr 22, 2020 10:52 am | Comments (4)
Zoom
Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team Chair Caroline Smith.
Nobody got Zoom bombed at a monthly meeting of Downtown and Wooster Square neighbors, thanks to extra steps taken by management team leadership.
Continue reading ‘Safe From Zoom Bombs, Management Team Dives Into Housing’
by | Apr 12, 2020 4:25 pm | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photos
A plague killed the formal celebration. Wooster Square’s cherry blossoms put on their annual show anyway — drawing pilgrims like Gina Helland (pictured with Yasmerica Cortorreal) to drink in the splendor.
Continue reading ‘Cherry Blossoms Signal Rebirth Amid Covid’
by | Apr 10, 2020 5:27 pm | Comments (1)
Friedrich Nietsche, the man who famously declared that God is dead, also said he might have become a good Christian, as was the case with that other former pagan, renegade, and convert St. Augustine, had Jesus’ disciples only been better examples of human beings.
Was this too much to ask?
by | Apr 6, 2020 9:17 am | Comments (0)
Chris Randall Photos
Jessica Lynn.
Jessica Lynn — founder, owner and instructor at Polefly Aerial Fitness — has a travel pole that has made its way over the past six years through a variety of New Haven locations, from a talent show at the Yale Forestry School to a burlesque show at Elm City Social and many places in between. Currently, however, it resides at Lynn’s house as she and her staff seek out ways to share the same talent and training typically available at Polefly’s Wooster Street studio with their beloved community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Part of Polefly’s answer: video.
by | Mar 24, 2020 3:48 pm | Comments (5)
Lucy Gellman / Thomas Breen photos
Local funeral home directors Bill Iovanne, Howard K. Hill, and Eddie Gist: Preparing for the pandemic.
Local funeral homes are scaling back memorial services, stepping up cleaning routines, closely counting protective equipment supplies, and seeking out increased refrigeration capacity as they brace for a potential increase in business because of a potential wave of coronavirus-related mortalities.
by | Mar 19, 2020 7:59 pm | Comments (2)
Emily Hays Photo
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy brings carrots and onions to New Haven’s Loaves and Fishes food pantry.
Inside a box of groceries at the food pantry.
Free us from our paperwork, and we can feed people more safely in this crisis.
This was the message from New Haven’s Loaves and Fishes to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on Thursday. Murphy stopped at the food pantry on Olive Street to ask New Haven food distributors for the needy how the federal government can help them during the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading ‘Food Pantry Appeals To Murphy For Help Feeding Hungry During Crisis’