Like the Shoor Building, which I featured yesterday, the Sage-Allen building on Main Street in Hartford was designed by Isaac A. Allen, Jr. The yellow brick Renaissance Revival department store building was built in 1898 and originally housed both Sage-Allen & Co. and the Chas R. Hart Co., a carpet, drapery and wall paper retailer. The two companies each had display windows, on the first and second floors respectively. Sage-Allen soon grew and came to occupy the adjacent buildings on Main Street to the south. The company went bankrupt in the 1990s and the building was in danger of demolition. New apartment and retail space was to be constructed on the site and a design solution was found that incorporated the old facade with new additions on either side. The resulting new structure, called the Lofts at Main and Temple, has allowed the Sage-Allen facade to still dominate the view east up Pratt Street, as it has for over a century.
Also, check out the latest posts on my Historic Places blog about sites I recently visited in Pennsylvania and New York: Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh NY and Knox’s Headquarters in New Windsor NY; the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches and Cemeteries of St Clair, PA; Trout Hall in Allentown PA and the Troxell-Steckel House in Egypt PA; and historic buildings of Jim Thorp and Bethlehem PA, including Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter.