Dixwell

NXTHVN Show Dives Into Migration

by | Mar 12, 2024 9:54 am | Comments (1)

Oluseye

Good Luck Totem.

An antiquated candy vending machine sits atop a wooden stand in the lobby of NXTHVN, its faded signage and weathered hardware still beckoning the visitor to give it a coin. But it doesn’t work, and what’s inside it isn’t candy, but a multitude of cowrie shells, from sea snails found in tropical oceans. They’ve been used as money, as jewelry, and as rattles for instruments. But here, they can’t be used at all — not for any price.

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New Biz, Made in Greenwood

by | Feb 20, 2024 2:21 pm | Comments (0)

Lisa Reisman Photo

Co-owners Donald Moody and Mujahid Mohammed with Dannie Beverly of Made in Greenwood smoke shop.

Mujahid Mohammed had a dream. So did Dannie Beverly. And Donald Moody. It was, as it turned out, the same dream.

All three of us did time in prison, and we wanted to come up with something for the community, a platform to give back, and that was starting our own business,” said Mohammed on a recent afternoon at Made in Greenwood.

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“A Dixwell Daughter": Q House Unveils Constance Baker Motley Forever Stamp

by | Feb 2, 2024 12:45 pm | Comments (20)

Yash Roy Photos

NAACP New Haven President Dori Dumas and Motley's niece Constance Royster unveil the stamp at Q House event.

Judge Constance Baker Motley was the only woman to work at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund during the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education. She was Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer. She was the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and she fought nine more desegregation cases, winning every single one. 

She was a daughter of New Haven. She was a daughter of Dixwell. She was a daughter of the Q House. 

Now she joins King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Thurgood Marshall on a U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp.

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Will She Live In "Winchester Green"?

by | Feb 1, 2024 12:46 pm | Comments (53)

Laura Glesby Photo

Carlota Clark at Wednesday evening's open house at Science Park.

A rendering from Pine's presentation: Apartments up to $4,500 a month on Winchester Ave.

As Science Park developers presented renderings of a housing complex soon to rise on Winchester Ave., Carlota Clark wondered if one of the 283 apartments would someday be hers.

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91 Shelton Studios Smash Storage Space Sale

by | Jan 25, 2024 4:15 pm | Comments (21)

Nora Grace-Flood Photos

Kennies Earl: Not "invisible."

Mother Juniper members Lindsay Skedgell and Christian Abbott: Jamming conversion plans.

Mother Juniper frontwoman Lindsay Skedgell unplugged from her Vox AC15 and tuned into Zoom from a vacant” ex-factory building to send developers a message: 91 Shelton is far from empty.

Skedgell was among dozens of artists who banded together to flood the City Plan Commission’s Zoom room after hearing earlier that day that their studio space, a five-story former factory building at 91 Shelton Ave., is slated for sale to a self-storage company.

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Q House Turns 100

by | Jan 15, 2024 11:47 am | Comments (1)

The Q House is celebrating the 100 years that have passed since the community fixture first opened its doors in 1924.

The space will be hosting events throughout 2024, which can be read about here, to honor Q House history and strengthen its current community. Below, we’ve included a letter sent by the Q House Centennial Committee with more details. 

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Alder Sues City For $100M

by | Jan 3, 2024 3:29 pm | Comments (54)

Laura Glesby photo

Streater: Lost 24 years of his life to a crooked prosecution.

On Monday Troy Streater was sworn in for his first full term a city alder. On Tuesday he sued the city for $50 million in punitive damages and $50 million in compensatory damages for the two dozen years he spent in prison on a wrongful conviction. 

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Q House Celebration Brings Winter Joy

by | Jan 2, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (2)

Winter Wonderland celebration in full swing.

There were toys, every kind of toy, over 2,000 in all. There were remote-control cars and action figures and explorer kits and puzzles and Legos and Slime and board games and magnetic building blocks and light boxes and glow-in-the-dark basketballs and crystal balls, as well as dolls of every age, model, and style.

Young partygoer amid snowflakes.

Under the brights lights of the Dixwell Community‑Q House gymnasium at the first annual Winter Wonderland Celebration toy giveaway on the Saturday before Christmas, there was music booming and people dancing and kids tearing around the hardwood floors, and snow swirling from a snow machine, and cotton candy, and Santa and Mrs. Claus perched on a sleigh for photo-ops.

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Garden Workshop Teaches How To Put Down Roots

by | Nov 21, 2023 9:07 am | Comments (3)

Brian Slattery Photo

Dishawn Harris, a.k.a Farmer D., at Saturday's workshop.

Putting your hands to soil to plant garlic. Chewing on a leaf of fresh oregano. Noticing the sun on your face. At Rooted Youth,” a collaborative event between the Dixwell art center NXTHVN and the garden-creation outfit Root Life, held at the Goffe Street Armory Garden, participants learned about how these simple experiences can open up broader pathways to understanding more about our relationship to our environment, and how we can adapt to climate change.

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Ex-Elks Lodge Demolished For Dixwell Plaza Redev

by | Nov 16, 2023 5:02 pm | Comments (32)

Nora Grace-Flood photo

87 Webster St. destroyed, in preparation for Dixwell block's rebirth.

As an excavator arm reached out to tear down the wall of the old Elks Club at Webster Street and Dixwell Avenue, Beverly Barnes lifted a hand to shield her face from the sight — then readjusted her focus to an anticipated future of bustling sidewalks, modernized apartments and new neighbors.

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5 Write-Ins Run For Alder

by | Nov 6, 2023 9:57 am | Comments (2)

Thomas Breen / Lisa Reisman / Paul Bass / Laura Glesby photos

Write-in alder candidates (clockwise from top left) Josh Glaab of Ward 10, Fred Christmas of Ward 21, Ira Johnson of Ward 11, Dennis Serfilippi of Ward 25, and Susan Campion of Ward 18.

A high school science teacher in East Rock, a community organizer in Dixwell, a budget watchdog in Westville, and a Tweed critic in Morris Cove are some of the five alder hopefuls this year seeking to convince voters to put pen to ballot to support their write-in candidacies for local legislative office.

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GED Classes Come To The Q House

by | Nov 3, 2023 2:31 pm | Comments (1)

Maya McFadden Photo

Toni Thorpe, Royce Hatfield, Richard Cowes, Sara Gonzalez, Latoya Armstrong, and Stephanie Paris-Cooper.

Every day last spring, Latoya Armstrong dropped her daughter off for camp at the Q House. 

One day in April, on her way out she scanned a flyer QR code to learn about the programs at the Dixwell community center and found a perfect fit for herself: GED classes by the New Haven Adult & Continuing Education Center.

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In Ms. Chambers' Class, "Math Is Everywhere"

by | Oct 23, 2023 1:58 pm | Comments (11)

Maya McFadden Photo

Math teacher Charity Ann Chambers helps students "embrace mistakes."

As her ninth-grade students puzzled through box and dot plots, Achievement First Amistad High School math teacher Charity Ann Chambers urged them not to be discouraged. Sometimes, she said, trying is more exemplary to me than accuracy.”

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Regina Winters-Toussaint To Be Inducted Posthumously Into CT Women’s Hall of Fame

by | Oct 12, 2023 4:00 pm | Comments (2)

Regina Winters-Toussaint.

While a student at the Yale School of Architecture in 1992, Regina Winters-Toussaint created her own summer internship. As one of the first counselors for LEAP, then a new youth enrichment program in New Haven, she moved into Westville Manor public housing, where she mentored the young people living there.

That willingness to steep herself in the experience of those who would live and work in the structures she built is among the reasons for the induction of Winters-Toussaint, who died of cancer at 47 in April 2016, in the CT Women’s Hall of Fame, according to its executive director Sarah Lubarsky. 

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Affordable Housing Nonprofit Celebrates 44 Years

by | Oct 9, 2023 10:08 am | Comments (4)

Abiba Biao photo

Marcus Harvin: “As long as they’ll have me, I’ll be there.”

Re-entering society is a daunting task for many formerly-incarcerated individuals. For Marcus Harvin, that stress was partially alleviated thanks to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS) — an affordable housing nonprofit where Harvin has found a sense of purpose through community building and beautification.

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Armory Added To CT Freedom Trail

by | Oct 2, 2023 8:45 am | Comments (13)

John T. Hill photo

On the Green, 1970.

Thousands of National Guardsmen gathered in the Goffe Street Armory, weapons of war in hand as they prepared to confront anti-war activists and Black Panther trial protesters on the Green.

But unlike at Kent State and Jackson State just a few days later, in New Haven, that violence didn’t come. A conspiracy” of town and gown, Black and white, local and national players prevailed. The peace was kept, for the most part.

Fifty-three years later, the Armory — used as the National Guard’s staging ground for the May Day rally of 1970, a potential wellspring for bloodshed on that tumultuous day — was commemorated instead as a city landmark of the civil rights movement.

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Small Biz Energy Efficiency Campaign Kicks Off In Dixwell

by | Sep 27, 2023 3:19 pm | Comments (2)

Maya McFadden Photo

United Illuminating (UI), city officials, and small business owners kick off Small Business Energy Efficiency Campaign.

Flyer to be handed out during neighborhood canvassing.

Local small businesses looking to save money on their energy systems can also help address the climate crisis at the same time — by switching to LED lights, better sealing windows, improving insulation, adopting programmable thermostats, and other energy-efficient interventions.

So pitched city officials and representatives from United Illuminating (UI) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG) on Monday as they kicked off a week-long Small Business Energy Efficiency Campaign in the rain at 300 and 302 Dixwell Ave. that is designed to support some of those climate-friendly changes.

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