Maya McFadden Photo
Henry Fernandez, Jacqueline Bracey, Jeanette Morrison, Toni Harp, and Malcolm Welfare help cut the Q ribbon Saturday.
Hundreds celebrated the reopening of Dixwell’s newly restored Community “Q” House Saturday with hope for the future and a nod to history.
The revived community center brought hundreds out to a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday. The project leaders promised the center will be a second home to all of the community as it once was to many attendees decades ago.
Saturday’s ribbon-cutting crowd.
The community celebrated the reopened safe haven for youth and deemed it a “beacon of light” for the city’s future.
The Saturday ceremony opened with an introduction from the Southern Connecticut State University Blue Steel Drumline and a performance by Hillhouse High School cheerleaders. Rev Frederick Streets of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church offered a prayer as well.
The new center is home to a recording studio, senior center, game room, fitness room, gym, entrepreneurship kitchen, and several programming rooms. (Read more about the building amenities here.)
The center was celebrated as a new home of recreation, learning, resources, and fellowship by the ceremony’s dozens of speakers.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, who spearheaded the reopening project over the last 10 years, hosted the nearly three-hour ceremony leading up to the center’s ribbon cutting.
The center was referred to as a “beacon for youth” by leaders like U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, State Sens. Gary Winfield and Martin Looney, State Rep. Toni Walker, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Gov. Ned Lamont, Mayor Justin Elicker, and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers.
“If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s to be self sufficient. That’s what this building is going to do,” Morrison said during Saturday’s ceremony.
“The Dixwell Q House was our foundation,” said Walker. “Thank you for making sure we can all come to the table and eat the bread.”
The original Dixwell Q House building.
The Q House advisory board recently released a survey for the community to gather feedback about what New Haveners would like to see happen at the center. Click here to take the survey.
“There’s never going to be another ribbon cutting for the Q House, because this building will live forever,” Elicker predicted.
Q House Advisory board members Malcolm Welfare with daughter, Harp, and Margo Taylor.
Former Mayor Toni Harp thanked the Dixwell community for keeping the Q House spirit alive and bringing its reopening to reality.
LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez recalled the original rendering of the building made by his close friend and renowned architect Regina Winters.
The late Regina Winters.
Winters’ ideas for a Q House design made up of African motifs came to life during the reconstruction process that occurred after her death in 2016. Winters and Fernandez founded LEAP together. “I see much of her here,” he said. “This is a testament to who she was.”
Fernandez added that LEAP‘s after school program hosted at the Q House has 50 available spots for 7 – 12 year old New Haven youth.
As tours led by LEAP counselors went on throughout the building, guests got a first look at the Toni Nathaniel and Wendell Carl Harp Historical Museum.
Project leaders named the museum after former Mayor Toni Harp and her husband, a leading local architect and developer, because of their longtime dedication to the city, and because Harp’s work over the past decade to secure the Q House reconstruction funding from as mayor. (The state committed $14.5 million toward the project in 2016.)
Harp Saturday paid a visit to the museum honoring her legacy as the first woman and the second African American to serve as mayor of New Haven. She posed for photos with New Haveners who thanked her for supporting the center’s revival.
“You put your blood, sweat, and tears into this. You deserve this space,” advisory board member and educator Malcolm Welfare told Harp.
Visitors gather in Harp-dedicated museum.
The museum’s first exhibit was created by artist Frank Mitchell, who put New Haven’s history in perspective with national moments in history.
“I want the community to come here to be closer to history,” Harp said. “I’m proud that it’s a place that can show that hopes and dreams can come to fruition.”
Harp said she looks forward to the museum displaying historical artifacts that show the leaders who paved the way for her.
In addition to Mitchell’s exhibit, the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church set up a display highlighting key leaders in the Q House history and Dixwell community. The church’s history committee chair, Charles Warner Jr., talked with museum visitors about the history of the first iteration of Q House, which was originally on land donated by the church. Achieved documents were put on display of the formal agreements made by the church.
Harp admires exhibit in museum honoring her legacy.
Photos of past Q House employees who moved on to be nationally recognized politicians, activists, and historical leaders included Myra Adele Logan, a Q House secretary in 1928 who later became the first black woman to perform open heart surgery; and Laura Belle McCoy, who founded the first black girl scout troop in the nation at the Q House in the 1920s.
“It’s nice to see folks I haven’t seen in years at something that’s not a funeral,” said Newhallville organizer Shirley Lawrence.
Hill Central School educator Dee Marshall described the former Q House as a safe haven that sheltered Dixwell residents from racism and segregation in the ‘50’s and ‘60s. “We had everything we needed right here. We could get education, history, family, jobs while being safe at the same time all right here.”
Dee Marshall.
Marshall recalled volunteering at the former Q House in the 1990s, teaching youth about history. At the Saturday ceremony Marshall picked up multiple free books for her classroom.
Artist Tracey Massey recalled living across the street from what use to be Winchester School, now known as Wexler Grant School, as a child and attending programs at the school and the former Q House. She learned her first African dance at school, then learned about Black history and healthful eating after school at the Q House.
Community members search for personalized bricks.
Dixwell’s former Q House and neighborhood school instilled a love for theater, art, ice skating, track, and drill in Massey at 9 years old. “All my skills to this day I learned here,” she said.
Massey worked an overnight shift but refused to miss the reopening of her childhood “safe haven and village.”
Q House Advisory board member Sean Reeves and Tracey Massey.
She got “lifesaving” help from the Q House as a young mom at 17 years old, she said. “Learning all that wisdom from the older people that came here too taught me discipline and structure — it saved my life as a teenager.”
She recalled rap battles in the hallways, teaching herself to ice skate on small frozen puddles outside, and hearing her first Nina Simone song at the Q House as a child.
“I have hope for my kids and grandkids now that this is back,” she said. “
Maaaaaaan I absolutely love this. So many fond memories at the "old" Q. I say old because that building was never old to us as community members. We loved every inch, no matter how it aged or how tired it look.
It is a beautiful accomplishment to have this historical institution and true safe space brought back to the community. Onward and upward Elm City!!!!!