New Video: Site of Hartford’s First Skyscraper

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Site of the First Skyscraper in Hartford, CT (History of the NW corner of Main and Asylum Streets)

This is my latest video. It’s about the northwest corner of the intersection of Asylum Street with Main Street in Hartford, across from the Old State House. There were colonial farmhouses here until 1821, when Henry L. Ellsworth built a commercial building that came to be called the Catlin Building because it house the store of Julius Catlin. A later notable tenant was David Mayer, the famous Hartford jewelry seller. That building was torn down in 1897 to make way for a new and larger Catlin Building, which was in turn replaced by Hartford’s first skyscraper, built in 1912 for the Hartford National Bank and later known as the Hartford-Aetna Building. It was finally torn down in 1990 to the dismay of preservationists. Just to the north was the Hills Block, built in 1861 and replaced in 1929 by the building that was for years a J.J. Newberry store.

New Video: History of the Corner of Main & Peal Streets in Hartford

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Here is my second video for YouTube. Discover the history of a historic corner of Hartford, Connecticut through historic images and maps. Currently dominated by the large building at 777 Main, the northwest corner of Main & Pearl Streets in Hartford has had an interesting series of buildings. The 1600s house of early settler Thomas Olcott was replaced in the 1820s by Union Hall (where Dr. Horace Wells was inspired by a demonstration of laughing gas), followed by the building of c. 1870 of the grand headquarters of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was greatly expanded by the Hartford National Bank & Trust Company in the 1920s before being torn down in the 1960s.

Daniel Griswold House (1809)

Daniel Griswold House in Ivoryton, Connecticut

Just south of the Mill Pond, at 25 Main Street in the Ivoryton section of Essex, is a house built in 1809 by Daniel Griswold (1780-1870). In 1801 he had married Fanny Babcock (1779-1859). After her death in 1859, Daniel, who was then 79 years old, married Fanny Spencer. Daniel’s son William inherited the house. He would supply land for the new business enterprise of Comstock & Griswold, started in 1834 by his brother Edwin Griswold and Samuel M. Comstock, that would soon start producing ivory combs, launching the ivory industry in Ivoryton.

Jesse Barber House (1800)

The house at 259 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built sometime before 1800 (an chestnut beam in the attic is inscribed with the date 1789). It was the home of Jesse Barber, a cobbler who had a shop north of his house and also a tannery. He would fix the shoes of the children who walked by his home on their way to school. For many years the house’s residents got their water from a spring on the hill to the east which traveled through a system of split and grooved logs laid end-to-end. This was later replaced by a lead pipe that had to be kept unfrozen in the winter to prevent clogging. New owners, Dennis and Wanda Mahoney, replaced this system with an artesian well in 1953. They also extensively restored the house and totally rebuilt the rear ell. An earlier owner, Ambrose Norman, had kept riding horses, but gave up the house to a grain merchant from Granby to satisfy an unpaid feed bill.

Christ Church, Pomfret (1882)

Christ Church in Pomfret, consecrated in 1882, was designed in a rural Victorian Gothic style by architect Howard Hoppin. It was constructed through a memorial gift of the Vinton family in honor of the Rev. Dr. Alexander H. Vinton and his wife, Eleanor Stockbridge Thompson Vinton. Their friend, Rev. Phillips Brooks of Boston, who wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” preached at the laying of the church’s cornerstone. The building is architecturally distinctive, with an interesting use of rubble stone and brick and an exaggerated roof line. It replaced an earlier church building, built the 1820s, that once stood to the north of the church’s current location. The church has six Tiffany stained glass windows.

Henry B. Bissell House (1850)

The Henry B. Bissell House, built in 1850, is located at 202 Maple Street in the Bantam section of Litchfield. In an area with numerous eighteenth and nineteenth-century wood frame farmhouses, it is a rare example of a stone house, being constructed of ashlar granite. The Bissell family, descended from one of Litchfield’s earliest settlers, were major landowners in Bantam. Henry B. Bissell (1814-1897), who built the house, was a deacon of the Congregational Church. He was described in 1896 in a Biographical Review volume entitled The Leading Citizens of Litchfield County, as “one of the most respected and prosperous agriculturists of this section of the county.” The book goes on to explain:

Deacon Henry B. Bissell had better educational advantages than were generally given a farmer’s son in his time. After finishing with the district schools he was sent to the seminary, where he was under the instruction of John P. Brace. He subsequently engaged in teaching, which he continued for six winters. His chief occupation, however, was assisting on the home farm, where he remained until twenty-eight years of age. Having by that time much experience in general farming he then bought the property on which he now resides. Since that time he has placed the two hundred and thirty acres of fertile land in a yielding condition and made many other valuable improvements, sparing neither time nor expense for that purpose. In 1850 Deacon Bissell erected his present residence, which stands on rising ground overlooking the village three miles distant, the granite used in its construction having been quarried on his own farm. He pays a good deal of attention to dairying, keeping some twenty head of fine cows, and finds this branch of his business quite profitable.

The house remained in the Bissell family until 1985, a period of 135 years.