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’
by | Mar 18, 2020 3:51 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
John Aiello with his “kite,” or sign he uses to panhandle on East Street, near Sports Haven
“People walk by you like you ain’t nothin’, like you got the plague,” said the older homeless man. “And at night it’s a ghost town.”
“The libraries are closed, and you can’t apply for a job. And the only place to stay warm is riding the bus,” said the younger one.
by | Mar 13, 2020 12:54 pm | Comments (3)
Sally Fleming Photo
Homeless patrons gather outside Sunrise for meals to go.
Within 24 hours, a crucial meal-provider for the homeless found a way to keep free breakfasts flowing while helping stem the spread of COVID-19 — even if that means sacrificing some of a sense of community in the short run.
Continue reading ‘Homeless Meal Lifeline Shifts To Take-Out’
by | Mar 11, 2020 2:10 pm | Comments (1)
Project rendering.
Builder Andrew Consiglio got his final approvals Tuesday night to finally get start on building a house in historic — and architecturally protected —Wooster Square.
Continue reading ‘Zoners Give Final OK To Wooster Sq. Builder’
by | Mar 2, 2020 2:08 pm | Comments (0)
Everyone needs to learn to swim. It’s a great form of exercise that you can do throughout your life. It is also an important skill for safety’s sake.
by | Mar 2, 2020 8:47 am | Comments (4)
Emily Hays Photos
Quinnipiac student and SEAAV founder McKenna Haz.
For the next three months, New Haveners can buy leggings and sports bras in Wooster Square created by a Quinnipiac student –- and help reuse plastic waste in the process.
Continue reading ‘Designer Turns Plastic Bottles Into Clothes’
by | Feb 27, 2020 3:26 pm | Comments (4)
Courtesy New Haven Museum
Guitar found in the former clock factory on Hamilton Street.
Clocks. The Sex Ball. A punk club, then an R&B club. An indoor skate park. The state’s largest LGBTQ club.
All of these are part of the past of the old New Haven Clock Company building on Hamilton Street.
In the present day, that factory complex is being cleaned up in preparation for development into housing, some of which is to include housing for artists. The reason for that concept — and the deeper history of artistic life in New Haven — is brought to sparkling, fascinating life in “Factory,” an exhibit that celebrated its opening on Friday and will run at the New Haven Museum on Whitney Avenue until Aug. 29.