City of New Haven history

The African Ecclesiastical Society, later to become the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, was organized in 1820 and purchased a church on Temple Street four years later.

After slaves revolted and took control of the Amistad in 1839, Americans captured the ship off Long Island and imprisoned the slaves in New Haven.

The Exchange Building is also a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. It housed the law office of Roger Sherman Baldwin when he represented the Amistad Africans and worked with John Quincy Adams in preparing their case before the United States Supreme Court, which decided on March 9, 1841 that the African captives were free.

The oldest Jewish congregation in the state, Congregation Mishkan Israel, was established in 1843 when Connecticut law permitted non-Christian societies to organize.

The Knights of Columbus was founded in New Haven in 1882 to serve the city’s Irish Catholic immigrant population.

Edgewood Park began with sixty acres donated in 1889.

The New Haven Symphony Orchestra is the fourth oldest symphony in America, having given its first performance in 1895.

St Raphael's Hospital, founded in 1907, also co-operates with Yale's medical school.

George C. Smith of Bradley Smith Co. created the first lollipop in 1908, named “Lolly Pops” after a racing horse he had placed a bet on.

The Young Men’s Hebrew Association, which would become the Jewish Community Center, was founded in an office building at 200 Orange Street in 1917.

Wooster Square, which in the 1950's was a slum, is now home to new commercial and industrial buildings and an established historic district.

In 1954, Mayor Richard Lee began his first of eight terms as Mayor of New Haven.

New Haven Parks Commission Float 1956 Parade. courtesy of CT Irish American Historical Society Archives: Collection of Richard Clark and St Patrick's Day Parade A Local Legacies Project.

In 1957 New Haven was one of the first Eastern cities to undertake wholesale urban renewal of its decaying downtown area.

In 1963, he helped organize the Freddy Fixer Parade, a community outreach event aimed at promoting environmental stewardship and unity within his Elm City neighborhood.

The project, completed in 1965, included the office tower facing Chapel Street, a shopping mall, a 300-room hotel and Macy's and Edward Malley's department stores.

However, revitalization of many areas of the city continued after Lee left office in 1969.

Downtown New Haven contains more than half a dozen sites on the Connecticut Freedom Trail, established in 1996 to recognize places associated with the abolitionist movement, civil rights movement, and African-Americans’ struggle for freedom and dignity in Connecticut.