87-89 Atwood Street, Hartford (1911)

This month’s issue of Hartford magazine has an article about the restoration of a “Perfect Six” apartment building at 87-89 Atwood Street in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood. Perfect Sixes, with three floors, double bow-fronts, and six apartments, were very popular in Hartford at the start of the twentieth century. The one on Atwood Street was a particularly stylish one, intended for middle-class residents. Built in 1911 by two Russian immigrants, Louis and Morris Schoolnik, the building had become run down by the 1980s and was shut down by the city in 1997. The Northside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance, which works to revitalize Asylum Hill, sought to acquire and restore the building, a process which took some time, during which the building further deteriorated. The roof collapsed in February 2009, but the reclamation project was able to retain the building’s historic facade facing the street, while the rest was demolished and rebuilt. The converted structure now contains two townhouses.