Emily Hays Photo
Dwight neighbor Pat Wallace posts flyer at Pizza House on Howe.
Pat Wallace and Jane Comins have been walking the rescue beat, going address by address to save historic houses in the Dwight neighborhood before developers buy them and knock them down.
In their latest effort, they have sent 635 postcards to homes in the Dwight Street Historic District and posted flyers around the neighborhood. Both link to local tradespeople who can fix up homes and grants and rebates that can make the repairs affordable, among other resources.
“Dwight has always been a working-class neighborhood. It’s a wonderful neighborhood,” Wallace said. “We don’t want developers to dismantle the fabric of what’s here.”
Comins (pictured above on the left) and Wallace started working together with other Dwight preservationists to save 95 Howe St. and 97 Howe St. from demolition.
Two New York-based brothers had bought the properties and planned to knock them down to build a 30-unit apartment complex. One of the buildings slated for demolition was once home to pioneering black abolitionist Rev. Amos Gerry Bemon, the preservationists argued. The developers, Jacob and Josef Feldman, said the buildings were too rundown to save.
It is this demolition-by-neglect argument that Wallace and Comins hope to prevent in the future with the flurry of postcards and flyers. All link to a new page on the Greater Dwight Development Corporation with a list of websites and phone numbers to call to learn how to buy a home or prevent a foreclosure, pay for energy-efficient home upgrades, or find a carpenter trained to repair historic houses.
If families want to sell their property, that is their right, Wallace said. She just wants homeownership and repair to be easy.
“I don’t want people forced out because it is too hard [to keep up their house],” Wallace said.
Wallace is personally familiar with that challenge and how the resources on the GDDC list can help.
Wallace owns a 19th century, four-family house next to Rainbow Park on Edgewood Avenue. The house is so old that vestiges of horse stalls are still visible inside, along with tree stumps that Wallace believes were incorporated into the building as blacksmith work stations.
Wallace has switched out the water heaters in the old home for more energy-efficient models and has replaced the furnaces with electric air pumps. She has added another, inner layer to her historic windows to make them more air-tight. And she hopes to add solar panels to her roof to pull the building’s energy use off the grid.
Connecticut Green Bank helped Wallace afford all the upgrades. The state-established bank provides loans to homeowners for energy upgrades and tax rebates for solar panels, among other programs.
“The people before me took care of [the house]. I want it to continue to be usable for a long time. I think being able to adapt is part of what it means to live in a historic home,” Wallace said.
Postcards Out, Flyers Up
Wallace, next to her home with Dwight neighbor and Yale medical student Osman Moneer.
Wallace dropped the 635 postcards into a corner mailbox on Thursday. On Friday, she started taping up flyers in Dwight establishments.
The postcards and flyers are the latest evolution of a two-year project on blight in the neighborhood. Like her home, Wallace worked with and adapted what was already in the city to make it happen.
She asked President’s Public Service Fellows from Yale to help out over the course of two summers. The first helped map houses with porches falling down and paint peeling. The second, sophomore Beichen Zhang, prepared a similar process for commercial buildings.
Comins and other volunteers, including Yale medical student Osman Moneer, walked around the neighborhood in early August to document blight in the commercial buildings.
Those involved in the project had hoped to host an open house for homeowners where they could meet and ask questions of all the relevant city departments and nonprofits.
The Covid-19 pandemic made such a gathering unwise, so the group created a virtual version: the Greater Dwight Development Corporation’s new webpage. The organizations that would have participated in the open house created Youtube videos on their services in English, and sometimes Spanish.
The Dwight Central Management Team is paying for the flyers, postcards and postage advertising the website with $1,000 from a city neighborhood improvement grant. Other organizations, like the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, pitched in labor because the project meshed with their mission.
Howe Street’s Pizza House (pictured above) was the first flyer recipient on Friday. An employee directed Wallace to an empty spot next to a print-out of Covid-19 safety precautions.
Wallace next visited a new flower shop, Any Occasion Creation (pictured).
Shop owner Carrien Davis buzzed Wallace in. Wallace began her pitch that the poster linked neighbors to homeownership resources. Davis stepped out from behind the counter and asked for details.
At the mention of Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven, Davis nodded. Her mother had purchased her home on Edgewood through the program in 1999. And Davis’ husband would soon be in the market for a house.
After taping up the poster, Wallace asked for bouquet starting prices. As the two chatted some more, Davis (pictured above) wrapped up a selection of yellow roses and green flower buds for $20, plus tax.
Outside, Wallace looked down at the flowers.
“This is so much grander than I would normally get for myself. I’ll think about who really needs flowers today that I could give it to,” she said.