New Haven Land Trust photo
Ida Ruth Wells with then-Land Trust Director Chris Randall in 2011.
Thomas Breen photos
The corner of County Street and Henry Street, to be renamed Ida Ruth Wells Corner.
The street corner outside of the Prescott Bush senior apartment complex will be renamed in honor of a late neighborhood stalwart who promoted community gardening at public housing complexes.
On Thursday night at City Hall, the City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) Committee voted unanimously in support of renaming the northwest corner of County Street and Henry Street “Ida Ruth Wells Corner.” The matter now goes to the full board for an expected routine final vote.
A dozen elderly African-American Prescott Bush Apartments residents attended the CSEP Committee hearing to advocate for the city’s recognition of a woman who lived in city public housing complexes for over 30 years and who was a trailblazer in supporting community gardens at Housing Authority of New Haven developments.
Percy Penn (center) with Newhallville / Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter and New Haven Land Trust ED Justin Elicker on Thursday night.
“She taught a lot of people a lot of stuff,” said Prescott Bush Tenant Resident Council (TRC) President Percy Penn. “A lot of people, she took them as her mother, her grandmother. I was one of them.
“We hope that y’all grant it because we need it,” he continued in advocating for corner renaming. “We need for her name to be out there so she won’t never be forgotten.”
Wells was born in 1921 in Newark, N.J. and died in 2016 in New Haven, according to a proposed order that Newhallville /Prospect Hill/Dixwell Alder Steve Winter submitted to the Board of Alders in support of the corner renaming.
Wells served as the vice chair of the board of the housing authority from 1991 to 2001. She served for many years as the president of Prescott Bush’s TRC.
“She was strong, persistent, kind, and collaborative leader,” Winter wrote, “the kind of community member who gives our City its great social capital. She was both an advocate for and a builder of community.”
Penn, Winter, and New Haven Land Trust Executive Director Justin Elicker told the alders Thursday night that Wells also distinguished herself as a pioneer in bringing community gardens to public housing complexes.
Elicker, who oversees over 50 community gardens as the head of the city Land Trust, said that Wells was an “exemplary garden coordinator” at the Prescott Bush community garden, making sure that community members could productively engage with growing their own fruits and vegetables on a plot just outside of their homes.
Elicker plays a recording of Ida Ruth Wells speaking about gardening at Thursday’s hearing.
Elicker played an audio recording of Wells that was made by the Land Trust in 2011 in which Wells talks about the self-affirming and community-building role that she sees community gardening playing, especially at public housing complexes.
“My most favorite garden memory was those first tomatoes I took off my old garden patch out there,” Wells said in the recording. “My son, who had been so ill for a long time, if you could have seen the expression on his face when I handed him those tomatoes, it did me more good than somebody handing me a handful of money.”
Evelyn Belton.
“If anybody deserves a name on a street,” said Prescott Bush resident Evelyn Belton, “Ms. Ida Wells does. Not only for her family, but for all of us.
“Hallelujah!” she shouted after giving her testimony in support of the corner renaming.
New Haven Land Trust photo
Ida Ruth Wells.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand voted along with the three other alders on the committee in support of the proposed renaming. He said that the renaming serves as a “double tribute,” both to New Haven’s Ida Ruth Wells and to the namesake crusading early 20th-century, anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells.
“I just find her to be an amazing historical figure who does not get enough attention today,” he said. “I think it’s a neat historical artifact that there’s a double historical recognition going on here.”
The street corner outside of the Prescott Bush senior apartment complex will be renamed in honor of a late neighborhood stalwart who promoted community gardening at public housing complexes.
They should take Prescott Bush the financial architect of Nazism off of the senior apartment complex and replace it with the name Ida Ruth Wells .