The final Middletown Common Council vote to approve the Honorary Street name of "Prince Mortimer Avenue" will take place on Tuesday, September 3rd at 7pm! 

This has been over a year in the making. It began with an inquiry I made to the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office back in May of 2023. Todd Levine and Marena Wisniewski were gracious enough to put me in contact with Middletown City Historian, Deborah Shapiro.

Deborah informed me that Middletown did not have an Honorary Street Name program… so we would need to create an ordinance. Dr. Jesse Nasta at Wesleyan University helped us locate templates of similar ordinances from other towns and Deborah worked to have an ordinance drafted for Middletown. After nearly a year, the ordinance was approved on February 5th, 2024.

The next step was for us to apply to have Prince Mortimer Avenue as the very first Honorary Street Name approved in Middletown using this newly created ordinance. Deborah supplied me with the newly created Honorary Street Name application on April 1st, 2024. Excited about the prospects, I completed and returned it the same day. The application first needed to go through the Public Works Committee for approval, which it did successfully on July 10th, 2024.

The final step is a vote in front of the Middletown Common Council on September 3rd at 7pm. The vote will take place at Middletown City Hall, 245 deKoven Drive, Middletown, CT. The vote will occur in Common Council chambers.

This has been a LONG time coming, so I'll be there in-person!  This is open to the public, so please considering joining us to celebrate this historic approval of an Honorary Street Name for a former enslaved man named Prince Mortimer… the city’s FIRST EVER Honorary Street Name! 

God Bless.