Artizan Street School

Artizan Street between Court & Grand (demolished)

Copies of school records from Annual Report of the Board of Education of the New Haven City School District, 1861. New Haven Public School Records mentioning Artizan School and Sarah Wilson.

Reference Map for Early Negro New Haven 1810-1850. Picture courtesy of Yale University Library, map from Warner, Robert Austin, New Haven Negroes: A Social History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.

Photo of Dr. Edward Bouchet from 1874 Yale College Graduation

The Artizan (or Artisan) Street School near the corner of Artizan and Court streets was one of several segregated New Haven grammar schools for African-Americans in the mid-1800s, including one on Carlisle Street in the Trowbridge Square area (then known as Spireworth) and another on Goffe Street. Each school was typically led by an African-American woman — such as Sally (sometimes called Sarah) Wilson or Elizabeth Price — giving instruction in her home to students of various ages. (There were no “graded” schools at all in New Haven until 1853.) The classes were often overcrowded — according to school records, in 1861 Wilson had only 93 spaces available in her makeshift “classroom” but taught 120 students, tutoring them in shifts because of the limited space. African-American teachers like Wilson and Price were paid only $200 a year by the school district when the average annual salary at that time for all teachers was $390; for female teachers, $293, and for male principals $1,500. 

The New Haven Board of Education passed a resolution in August 1863 declaring that “African or colored children” should receive the same resources from the school district as other children. The same year the Board agreed to support the Goffe Street Special School — the first purpose-built school for African-American children in New Haven (see Walk New Haven’s Lower Dixwell tour) — which subsequently absorbed much of the enrollment from the Artizan Street School.

After the Civil War, legally sanctioned school segregation in Connecticut was abolished by state statute (1868). Wilson does not appear in school records after 1866. There are no known photographs of her.

The best-known graduate of Wilson’s school was Dr. Edward Bouchet, who is believed to be the first African-American to earn a PhD (Physics, 1876) from an American university and one of the first known African-American graduates of Yale University.

Text Sources: Feinberg, Harvey J. “Black New Haven Residents During the Nineteenth Century: Resources Located in the Whitney Library, New Haven Museum and Historical Society,” Connecticut History Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Fall 2018), pp. 197-212; Marcin, Raymond B. “Nineteenth Century De Jure School Segregation in Connecticut,” Connecticut Bar Journal, Vol. 45, Issue 3, 1971, pp. 394-400; Annual Report of the Board of Education of the New Haven City School District,” various years 1850-1868, accessed at Link; Piascik, Andy, “Edward Alexander Bouchet: The First African-American to Earn a PhD from an American University,” ConnecticutHistory.org, February 12, 2020, Link.


Edward Cherry, AIA, talks about the site at the Ribbon Cutting for the tour, May 9, 2022.