Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Hartford Preservation Alliance Award

Tonight I’ll be receiving an award from the Hartford Preservation Alliance for my book, A Guide to Historic Hartford!

Sixth Anniversary!!!

Today is the Sixth Anniversary of Historic Buildings of Connecticut. That’s a post a day for six years with 2191 building posts so far!

Old State House to be part of Downtown Casino Plans

This was an April Fool’s Day Post.

The Mark Twain House to be Moved to Florida

This was an April Fools Day post.

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, long a Connecticut landmark, is to be moved to Orlando, Florida where it will form part of a new amusement park dedicated to Mark Twain and his famous characters, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. “We were initially approached to provide plans for building a replica of the house at the theme park,” said a spokesperson for the Mark Twain House and Museum, “but financial difficulties have required that we offer the entire house itself and all its furnishings.” This summer the house will be dismantled in sections, which will then be reassembled in Orlando early next year. The theme park will open in 2014. The current Mark Twain Museum building in Hartford will be converted into a rehabilitation facility for delinquent youths.

Historic Buildings CT is now Four Years Old!!!

Today marks the Fourth anniversary of the start of this website! So far there are 1464 posts on a lot of different buildings, but there are still many important ones I haven’t taken pictures of yet. I hope to get to them, but it takes time (and the gas is so expensive!) And there are many towns and cities I haven’t even covered yet. Working from the center of Connecticut, it does take more effort to get out to the edges, but I want to do more in Windham County to the northeast, Litchfield County to the northwest and Fairfield County to the southwest. Of course, there are still tons of buildings I could do just in the greater Hartford area! I also have a Massachusetts building blog, but it only gets updated every once in while, so I need to add more buildings to that as well, if I can get up there more often.

Starting on year four the only major change I can think of is to drop the “The” which preceeds house names (like “The Joseph Webb House”), which seems redundant. So, thank you everyone who follows this blog (and also follows me on Facebook and Twitter!)! I plan to have more buildings to share, so please keep visiting here!

Harriet Beecher Stowe House to be Covered in Graffiti

This was an April Fools Day post.

An interesting bit of news just came out: In honor of the approaching celebration of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 200th Birthday, her home in Hartford will undergo a striking transformation. This June, local Hartford students will be invited to decorate the Stowe House’s exterior with cans of spray paint, to be provided by the Center’s education department. In line with the Stowe Center’s Mission of inspiring positive change, the young artists will be encouraged to paint messages of hope that will promote social justice in the community. Words of change, such as “Hope,” “Justice,” “Caring” and “Effecting,” will feature prominently in the artwork. The Center’s spokesperson recently explained: “Harriet loved to have a garden with flowers of many colors. Now we will be taking that concept even further, as a rainbow of colorful messages and artwork will replace the house’s current gray exterior.” A Stowe Center guide added: “I think Harriet would have loved this activity. She was a painter after all! And you may remember the scene in the historical novel, Isabella and Harriet, in which Harriet and her husband Calvin, tipsy after a evening visiting at the Mark Twain House, splash buckets of paint on each other! It’ll be just like that! And if you say there’s no proof it ever happened, well there’s nothing to say it didn’t either!!!”

It’s Been Three Years!!!!

Historic Buildings of Connecticut is now three years old! Tht’s a post a day for three years! Thank you to everyone who has been following this blog and following me on Facebook and Twitter! To celebrate, I’ve launched a HistoricBuildingsCT Shop!! Tghe shop has lots of items (shirts, magnets, stickers and even a Teddy Bear!) and more will be added soon, so if anything looks good, you can support my efforts here by buying something! My CafePress Shop is located here: http://www.cafepress.com/HistBldCT. The picture above shows the work being done to strip and repaint the Webb House in Wethersfield. The picture was taken a few weeks ago, so the work has progressed a lot since then!