Armory Welcomes City's Second "Cooling" Mural

Top: Director of Cultural Affairs Adriane Jefferson, who acted as the day's emcee. Bottom: A detail of the mural, which stretches 250 feet across the Armory's County Street wall. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

The flowers are visible from blocks away, rising in white and blue against the red brick. Beside them, two turquoise stalks grow high, nearly reaching the roof. A dragonfly rests its wide wings for a moment; a trio of hoop houses glow bright white in the sun. Beyond them, orange and yellow telephone wires lead to a large stoplight, swinging forward against a sea of bright red.

In each brushstroke, there’s a call to action: not just to start talking about the toll of climate change on Black and Brown neighborhoods, but to bring more resources to those neighborhoods themselves. It’s not a solution, so much as a start.

Speakers brought that message to Goffe Street Tuesday morning, as artists, activists, Yale faculty and staff and city officials unveiled New Haven’s second climate-conscious “cooling” mural at the Goffe Street Armory. A collaboration between Yale University and the City of New Haven, the mural uses sun- and UV-reflecting cooling paint to lower the temperature of the building, a 150,000 square foot city-owned behemoth that once housed the Connecticut National Guard.

At 255 feet wide and 50 feet high, it is now the largest mural in the city. Artists include Yale Climate Engagement Fellow Daniel Pizarro and muralist Michael DeAngelo, as well as apprentices Violeta "V" Ware, Kaelynne Hernandez, Luis Alfonso and Maddie LaRose. It is supported by Yale Planetary Solutions, the Yale Schools of Art, Environment, and Architecture, and the city’s Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism. 

Pizarro (in sunglasses) with apprentices and DeAngelo Tuesday. "We are creatives with the ability to communicate complex themes into simple forms that transcend language. We can create beautiful interventions alongside community members that unlock the collective imaginary," he said. 

“This mural has to be the catalyst for larger discussions on how we as community build the kind of future that we want,” said Inner-City News Editor and WNHH Community Radio Host Babz Rawls-Ivy, who grew up between the city’s Newhallville neighborhood and Church Street South housing projects. “How we build the kind of neighborhoods that we want. Yeah, we want to be cool. The mural is the first way to start the coolness.”

“This initiative highlights the incredible role that artists and designers have in our society,” said Pizarro, pointing out details of a design inspired by the Armory’s long-running community garden. “This mural represents a unified voice, one that says proudly, ‘We want to see a better future for the people of New Haven,’ and one that is forward thinking in terms of climate action.”

The work—which joins an inaugural cooling mural on Mill Street in Fair Haven— is inspired by the thriving community garden that sits below it, with neat, green rows of raised beds that sprout from the spring into the middle of the fall. From right to left, it explodes into a rainbow of color, with bright red meant to reflect a warming planet and cool, electric blue mirroring a breeze that might roll through.

In the center, three larger-than-life arches rise against the brick, representations of the white PVC hoop houses that nurture so much plant life below. Multiple orange and yellow telephone poles and wires give it the distinct sense of being in a city neighborhood.

The goal, Pizarro said, is to engage and educate New Haveners around climate change, to which communities of color are generally much more vulnerable. This fall, artists plan to add explanatory text and a QR code with information about both the mural and the warming and extreme weather that is, as evidenced by Tuesday’s sticky, summer-like temps, already happening in New Haven and across the planet.

The work took nearly two years to get over the finish line. After starting her tenure in fall 2021, Yale School of Art Dean Kymberly Pinder first learned about cooling paint technology from Karen Seto, a professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of the Environment. As a scholar of public art, Pinder was intrigued: she had already observed “a lot of walls but not enough murals” across the city, and began thinking about chances to bridge that gap.

Enter Yale Planetary Solutions, a climate-focused initiative that had just announced a grantmaking program focused on sustainability and education. With its support, and wider support across the university, the city launched its first mural apprenticeship program, designed for Black and Latine artists who wanted the chance to grow their public art footprint. In total, Yale Planetary Solutions contributed $40,000 to the project. 

Tuesday, Mayor Justin Elicker singled out Cultural Affairs Director Adriane Jefferson and Deputy Director Kim Futrell as helping get the project and the apprenticeship program off the ground. The program, meant to dovetail with the city’s Cultural Equity Plan, is similar to an arts workforce initiative that Jefferson helped launch and steer during her time at the Connecticut Office of the Arts (in 2022, she was able to expand that work to the city through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts).

Top: Elihu Rubin, who spoke on behalf of the Armory Community Advisory Committee (AC2) with members Helen Kauder and Alexandra Taylor Mendez. Bottom: Yale School of Art Dean Kymberly Pinder. 

“To do something this size—” Pinder pointed at a sheet of eight-by-ten inch printer paper— “And then to make it that size, it is a journey,” she said, gesturing to the wall behind her.

“We have artists here,” she said. “Why don’t we actually make sure that all of these many walls, these empty walls around New Haven, actually have enough artists to cover them?”

While tree planting, solar initiatives and the creation and maintenance of greenspaces are part of the solution, Seto added, “there are things that cities can do right now that can have an immediate effect.” Cooling murals, which absorb and reflect heat, are one of those things.

The more there are in a concentrated area, she added, the greater the likelihood of bringing down the temperature in that community.

“This is what we need to do,” she said. “We need to use art to inspire people to take action on climate change. As a scientist, one of my missions is to inform the public and inspire policymakers to act. And all around the world, about two billion people who live in cities are exposed to extreme heat … I am just so thrilled that New Haven is taking a leadership [role] in this area. I learned so much over the last two years.”

Karen Seto. “If we had lots of murals around a location, like around a neighborhood block, it could actually help to cool down temperatures,” she said.

It’s a creative journey, other speakers noted, that must mark a beginning rather than a culmination. Noting the location of the mural—on a historic but dilapidated city landmark, across the street from a Black church and a public park, next to a prison, and blocks away from a public high school, early learning center and subsidized housing development—Rawls-Ivy called for more sustained investment in the community, including more community-based programming and public art in all of its spaces.

“I want to see a mural on the prison,” she said. “I want to see a mural on the school. I want to see murals on the churches. I want to see murals on houses. So that we take this idea of what it means to be in community, with all the intellectual capital and the political will that we can muster to bring together to do this work.”

“We used to be a model city,” she added, nodding to both the economic and emotional impact that the arts have on a city. “We can be again.” 

Beaver Hills neighbor Alexandra Taylor Mendez, who lives nearby on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, echoed that call to action, inviting attendees to join her in both beautifying the neighborhood and expanding opportunities for its residents.

Until 2016, she had never been inside the Goffe Street Armory, despite growing up just blocks away on Winthrop Avenue. Now, she tends to the garden with several of her neighbors and is a member of the Armory Community Advisory Committee (AC2).

“Let’s look at this opportunity as something huge for this area,” she said, dreaming aloud about a fresh produce market and free all-ages art and music classes that could occupy the space. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for this specific area. Every area has their little hub … Whalley, Beaver Hills and Edgewood, we want a home. And we want to make sure that it’s a home that represents the neighborhood.”

Mayor Justin Elicker. 

In a city of contrasts—none greater than Yale’s cool $41 billion amidst neighborhoods of need—that vision remains in flux. Last year, members of the AC2 held several community meetings around the future of the Goffe Street Armory, including potential uses for the building and funding sources for rehabilitation. In October 2023, those efforts were part of a recognition from the State Historic Preservation Office or SHPO, which marked it as a stop on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

Then earlier this year, the city received $250,000 for further planning efforts around the future of the Armory, which has been closed to the public for several years. For Taylor Mendez, that’s a reason to remain hopeful that the space will one day offer opportunities not just to her, but to future generations of New Haveners like her kids, who are 6 and 8 years old.   

Mayor Justin Elicker, whose support of Tweed-New Haven Airport has precipitously expanded New Haven's carbon footprint and vulnerability to sea level rise, pointed to the mural as a small part of the city's commitment to sustainability. Highlighting the city's Office of Climate and Sustainability, he also nodded to a commitment to plant 5,000 trees in the next five years, work to electrify city vehicles and expand charging stations, advance greener public transportation, and support of a new $25 million rapid transit initiative that will speed up transportation on several of the city's main roads.

The city is also working to expand its solar capabilities, from expanding its roughly three megawatts of solar energy to a growing “Solar For All” initiative that went citywide a year ago. Elicker highlighted recognition that the city received from Sustainable CT designating it as the first (and so far, only) Connecticut city to win its “gold” status. “And we have a lot of work to do,” he said.   

Jeff: What will it do for the neighborhood?

For Ware, one of four apprentices to work on the mural, it’s a start that she’s excited to be a part of. As an artist and climate-conscious engineer, Ware—who goes most often by “V”—applied for the apprenticeship after moving to New Haven, and finding the art community “very siloed,” she said. She didn’t bank on the community she would create in the process.

“The process was beautiful,” she said. While Ware is used to being the lead artist on projects, she was excited to learn from DeAngelo and Pizarro, both of whom she enjoyed working with. The project was also right up her alley: she moved to New Haven two years ago to work as a project manager for Yale, focusing directly on climate and sustainability. She’s also a veteran, and the Armory’s long and rich history spoke to her.

“It’s truly humbling,” she said of the project, looking out over the mural as she spoke. “I’m still digesting it.”

Riding his bike down County Street, neighborhood resident Jeff (he declined to give his last name) said he likes the mural, but hopes to see more resources allocated to the neighborhood—including to fight climate change—in its wake.

“It’s nice! Very nice,” he said. “I just want to know, what is the benefit to the neighborhood?”