Wooster Square is a neighborhood in the city of

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

to the east of

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

. The name refers to a park square (named for the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

hero,

David Wooster David Wooster ( – May 2, 1777) was an American general who served in the French and Indian War and in the American Revolutionary War. He died of wounds sustained during the Battle of Ridgefield, Connecticut. Several cities, schools, and public ...

) located between Greene Street, Wooster Place, Chapel Street and Academy Street in the center of the neighborhood. Wooster Square is also known as Little Italy: a bastion of

Italian American Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, ...

culture and cuisine, and is home to some of New Haven's (and the country's), best-known

pizza Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, onions ...

(specifically,

apizza New Haven-style pizza is a style of thin-crust, coal-fired Neapolitan pizza common in and around New Haven, Connecticut. Locally known as apizza (, from Neapolitan ''’na pizza'' , "a pizza"), it originated in 1925 at the Frank Pepe Pizzeria ...

) eateries, including

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, commonly known as Frank Pepe's or simply Pepe's (), is a popular pizza restaurant in the Wooster Square neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, at 163 Wooster Street. Opened in 1925, it is one of the oldest and best ...

and

Sally's Apizza Sally's Apizza is a pizzeria in the Wooster Square neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. Sally's Apizza also has locations in Stamford, Connecticut and Fairfield, Connecticut. Fare Sally's serves New Haven-style thin-crust apizza, which is b ...

. The square and much of the neighborhood are included in the Wooster Square Historic District, which was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1971. An annua
Cherry Blossom Festival
in Wooster Square Park commemorates the planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees in 1973 by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and neighborhood residents. The festival, founded and organized by the Historic Wooster Square Association, has grown from a modest event in the early 1970s with a local band entertaining a handful of neighbors under lighted trees to a major New Haven event that in 2016 attracted over 10,000 visitors.

Geography

The Wooster Square neighborhood consists of the area between the

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

railroad tracks (serving as the boundary with Downtown New Haven) and

Interstate 91 Interstate 91 (I-91) is an Interstate Highway in the New England region of the United States. It provides the primary north–south thoroughfare in the western part of the region. The Interstate generally follows the course of the Connecti ...

(between Exits 1 and 3), bounded on the south by the

Oak Street Connector The Oak Street Connector, officially known as the Richard C. Lee Highway (named after former New Haven mayor Richard C. Lee), is a freeway section of Route 34 that is located in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The freeway begins ...

. It is bordered on the west by

Downtown New Haven Downtown New Haven is the neighborhood located in the heart of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It is made up of the original nine squares laid out in 1638 to form New Haven, including the New Haven Green, and the immediate surrounding central ...

, on the south by Long Wharf, on the east by the neighborhood of Mill River, and on the north by

East Rock East Rock of south-central Connecticut, United States, with a high point of , is a long trap rock ridge located primarily in the neighborhood of East Rock on the north side of the city of New Haven. A prominent landscape feature and a popular ...

History

Wooster Square takes its name from Revolutionary War General David Wooster, who had a

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...

near Water Street. In 1825 the land was purchased by the city of New Haven and incorporated into the city. At that time, the area was close to the city's waterfront (it is now farther inland due to harbor filling), and by the 1840s it had become a residential area where

ship captain A sea captain, ship's captain, captain, master, or shipmaster, is a high-grade licensed mariner who holds ultimate command and responsibility of a merchant vessel.Aragon and Messner, 2001, p.3. The captain is responsible for the safe and efficie ...

s and wholesale grocers built large houses near the port.Sara E. Thomas (2008)
My Maps, My Neighborhood
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit 08.03.07 As a result, Wooster Square now includes a concentrated collection of distinctive 19th-century residential architecture, including several buildings by New Haven architect Henry Austin. Included are examples of the Federal,

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

, Islamic Revival, and Italian Villa styles, Late Victorian Italianate row houses, and Second Empire and Queen Anne homes.Wooster Square Historic District
The New Haven Preservation Trust website By the late 19th century, increased industrial activity in the vicinity made Wooster Square less desirable as a residential neighborhood, and Italian

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...

families began to move in and operate small stores out of their homes. This commercial activity damaged the neighborhood's reputation, and the area was targeted for demolition and redevelopment as early as the 1930s. In the mid-1950s, plans called for building

through Wooster Square Park, but the Wooster Square Project, which started in 1958, began a neighborhood revival and resulted in re-routing of the highway. Wooster Square made headlines on June 24, 2020 when its Christopher Columbus statue was removed by a city-hired crew in the aftermath of the

George Floyd Protests The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of internati ...

. City officials have since announced the commission of a new statue to replace the Columbus statue. The new statue, which will be just a few feet away from where the Columbus statue stood, will depict an Italian family.

Culture and commerce

Wooster Square is home to restaurants and bakeries known for their pizza and Italian pastries, local businesses, and a weekly farmer's market, City Seed. Its walkable proximity to

, its architecture, and its neighborhood feel, make it one of the most sought-after New Haven neighborhoods in which to live. It also has a thriving art scene. A sycamore tree on the west side of Wooster Square Park has been said by some observers to resemble an outline image of

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

List of streets

*Academy Street *Artizan Street *Bradley Street *Bridge Street *Brown Street *Chapel Street *Chestnut Street *Court Street *Depalma Court *East Street *Fair Street *Forbes Avenue *Franklin Street *Grand Avenue *Greene Street *Hamilton Street *Hughes Place *Ives Place *Jefferson *Lyon Street *New Street *Olive Street *Osborn Street *Saint John Street *Union Street *Wallace Street *Warren Street *Water Street *William Street *Wooster Place *Wooster Street (named for Revolutionary War hero

)

Notable People

Hunter Biden Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney who is the second son of President of the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden. He is also a hedge fund, venture capital, and privat ...

(former resident) - lawyer, second son of President Joe Biden * Rosa DeLauro (born and raised) - U.S. Congresswoman

References

General sources

* Harrison's Illustrated Guide: Greater New Haven * Michael Sletcher, ''New Haven: From Puritanism to the Age of Terrorism'', (Charleston, 2004)

Notes

External links

Wooster Square Historic District
New Haven Preservation Trust website (text excerpt from NRHP nomination, plus gallery of 9 photos)
Wooster Square photo

Historic Wooster Square Association
{{Authority control Tourist attractions in New Haven, Connecticut Neighborhoods in New Haven, Connecticut Italian-American culture in Connecticut Little Italys in the United States Populated places in New Haven County, Connecticut Historic districts in New Haven, Connecticut Restaurant districts and streets in the United States National Register of Historic Places in New Haven, Connecticut