Over the last few years I’ve made a number of videos about the history of Hartford’s riverfront area and I’ve now combined them into a single compilation video. The section of the now lost Commerce Street, between State Street and Morgan Street, was the center of the old West Indies trade in the early nineteenth century, back in the days when some of the city’s wealthiest citizens lived nearby. Some of the old buildings connected to this era stood until the Connecticut Valley railroad tracks were built along the riverside in the early 1870s. Much of what was left was lost when the Bulkeley Bridge was erected at the start of the twentieth century. At that time, a new Connecticut Boulevard was constructed that wiped out much that had existed adjacent to the river at the foots of State, Ferry and Morgan Streets. New buildings that were erected at that time, as well as structures associated with the city’s role in the tobacco boom of that era (and Connecticut Boulevard itself) were then lost when the interstate highways came through.

I cover all of this in these videos, as well as the history of Dutch Point, the lost peninsula that once existed where the Park River (now buried in an underground conduit) met the Connecticut River. Named for the old Dutch fort that stood nearby in the 1600s, Dutch Point was a center of shipbuilding and recieved lumber from the great log drives down the Connecticut River. It was later the site of the now lost Dutch Point power plant.

If you’ve seen some (or all!) of these videos, I hope you enjoy revisiting this amazing story and finding them now conviniently in a single place (in a video that’s over 2 hours long!). If you missed any of them, I encourage you to check them out (and don’t forget to leave a comment)!