The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Petition seeks to maintain name of Wooster Square
Two men wearing face masks walk by the blooming cherry blossoms in Wooster Square in New Haven on April 7.
NEW HAVEN — Nearly 3,000 people have signed an online petition urging Mayor Justin Elicker to maintain the name of Wooster Square, as discussion continues about who will be honored in the area after a statue of Christopher Columbus was removed.
The square is named after Maj. Gen. David Wooster, who was in charge of the militia in New Haven when it entered the Revolutionary War following the Battle of Lexington. Wooster went on to command the Connecticut militia, then died after being wounded fighting British troops in Danbury in 1777.
The petition cites the Italian American history of the neighborhood as a reason to maintain the area’s name.
In the late 19th century, many Italians immigrated to the U.S. and found a home in Wooster Square, where they started businesses and their own Catholic parish for the 1,500 Italians then in the neighborhood by 1884 and shaped the area for generations.
“This purpose of this petition is to keep the history of Wooster Square alive for future generations to enjoy, just as so many generations have enjoyed for the past 100+ years,” an organizer wrote on Change.org.
“This purpose of this petition is to keep the history of Wooster Square alive for future generations to enjoy, just as so many generations have enjoyed for the past 100+ years,” an organizer wrote on Change.org. “Wooster Square has been home to some of the best Italian pizza parlors, pastry shops, restaurants and local businesses, making it one of the most sought after neighborhoods in which to live in New Haven.”
“Wooster Square has been home to some of the best Italian pizza parlors, pastry shops, restaurants and local businesses, making it one of the most sought after neighborhoods in which to live in New Haven.”
Leaders of the cultural organizations REVA.A.R.T.LUTION and the Lineage Group organized a sit-in Friday calling for changing the park’s name in honor of William Lanson, a Black engineer and developer who laid the foundation of modern-day Wooster Square.
The sit-in came two days after the Christopher Columbus statue was taken down in in the park. That was done, in turn, after protesters took to the streets to call for racial justice, both in New Haven and across the country, following the death of
George Floyd.
Lanson is credited with being “the only contractor able to complete the complicated 1,350-foot extension to the town’s Long Wharf” and purchasing “substantial acreage and houses in New Haven’s largely undeveloped New Township in the 1810s and ’20s,” where many Black families then settled and mingled amicably with people in the nearby Irish neighborhood, according to historian Peter Hinks.
Lanson also owned a hotel, grocery store and livery service; fought for Blacks’ right to vote; and helped to form Temple Street Church, now the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ.