Thomas Breen photo
Varick Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church at the corner of Dixwell and Charles, soon to be renamed “Bishop James Varick Corner.”
Dixwell church founder James Varick.
A streetcorner adjacent to a historic Dixwell church will be named after an early 19th-century Methodist minister who defied racial segregation and founded the congregation.
During Monday night’s full Board of Alders meeting in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall, alders voted unanimously to permanently rename the northwest corner of Dixwell Avenue and Charles Street “Bishop James Varick Corner.”
Varick founded the historic Methodist congregation, now known as Varick Memorial A.M.E. Church, in 1818 alongside 35 enslaved New Haven African-Americans. The congregation has been based out of a church at that same corner of Dixwell and Charles for 110 years.
Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter offered a brief history lesson on Varick’s congregation during a short speech before the full board on Monday night.
He said that Varick, a Methodist minister from New York, came to New Haven in 1818 at the request of black parishioners from a local Episcopal church that was run by a staunch segregationist.
Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter (left) at a recent Tax Abatement Committee meeting.
Varick led 35 enslaved African American parishioners away from the segregationist’s congregation and towards founding a new church, which was called the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and then the A.M.E. Zion Church.
Winter noted the church was founded 30 years before slavery was officially abolished in Connecticut in 1848, and 12 years before the last enslaved Africans were sold on the New Haven Green in 1830.
“Just some really incredible historical perspective on what these parishioners went through to found this congregation,” he said. The church’s current building at the corner of Charles and Dixwell was built in 1908.
Winter said that the church, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year, has become a spiritual, educational, cultural, and social epicenter for the neighborhood over its 100-plus years on Dixwell Avenue.
“It really is an incredible asset to our neighborhood,” he said.
Varick Pastor Kelcy Steele preaches an August service.
After the vote, the church’s pastor, Kelcy Steele, celebrated the street corner renaming as a fitting tribute to the predominantly black congregation’s 200th anniversary.
“Street names — while a quick way to honor someone — are more powerful than most people realize,” he told the Independent by email. “They’re not just ways of getting your mail delivered. People invest a great deal in their street identity. Change a street name, and you change the way people think about their city. It’s where ideology meets asphalt.”
In a June 24 letter submitted to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, Landris Jones, the anniversary chairperson for the church, sent in 355 signatures in support of the corner name change; 241 of those signatures, he wrote, came from the Dixwell neighborhood, and the other 114 signatures came from other city residents.
The congregation will celebrate its bicentennial at at its church at 242 Dixwell Ave. from Thursday, Nov. 8 through Sunday, Nov. 11.