Boce W. Barlow Jr. House (1926)

At 31 Canterbury Street in Hartford is a house featured in Tour 8 of my new book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut. Built in 1926, it was later the home of Boce W. Barlow, Jr. (1915-2005), the first African-American in the Connecticut judiciary, being appointed judge of Hartford’s municipal court in 1957 and, later, a hearing examiner for Connecticut’s Civil Rights Commission. He also became Connecticut’s first African American state senator when he was elected in 1966. When Barlow and his wife, Catherine Swanson Barlow, first moved to the house in 1958, they were Canterbury Street’s first black family. Born in Americus, Georgia, in 1915, Boce W. Barlow, Jr. moved to Connecticut with his family the following year. He graduated from Hartford Public High School in 1933 and went on to attend Howard University and Harvard Law School. Boce Barlow Way, a street in Hartford, was named in his honor in 1987.