Colt Memorial Building, Wadsworth Atheneum (1906)

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The Colt Memorial, designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, was constructed in 1906 as part of the Wadsworth Atheneum complex of buildings. It connects the original structure of 1844 to the Morgan Memorial. Like the Church of the Good Shepherd, it was donated by Elizabeth Colt to house the many art objects she had given to the museum. It is in a Gothic style and features diamond paned windows, which match the original Atheneum building’s Gothic Revival style, and a medieval-style oriel window. In front stands a statue of Nathan Hale. It was created by Enoch Woods Smith as a contest entry in the 1880s for a statue to be placed in the State Capitol. It was not selected, but James J. Goodwin, who had commissioned it, later donated it to the museum in 1892.

BTW, this blog is now two months old!

Wadsworth Atheneum (1844)

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The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford is America’s oldest public art museum. Begun in 1842, and opening its doors in 1844, the Atheneum‘s original castle-like building was donated by the museum’s founder, Daniel Wadsworth, and was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town. In addition to the museum, it also once housed the Connecticut Historical Society, the predecessor to the Hartford Public Library, and the Watkinson Library, all under one roof! Three additional buildings would be added to the Atheneum complex in the twentieth century. In 1966, the interior of the original building was completely gutted and restored, while maintaining the original facade.

The Mark Twain House (1874)

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Built in 1874 on Farmington Avenue in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood for Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and designed in the High Victorian Gothic style by Edward Tuckerman Potter (who was known for his churches, including the Church of the Good Shepherd). Mark Twain lived here from 1874-1891 with his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, and their three daughters: Suzy, Clara and Jean. His wife was the one primarily involved in planning with the architect–apparently all Sam Clemens asked for was a red brick house! He also had a servant’s wing and a carriage house and employed about seven or so servants, including his butler, George Griffin, maid Katy Leary and coachman Patrick McAleer. It was while living here that Mark Twain wrote such classic works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Bad financial decisions, including his investment in the Paige Compositor typesetting machine, led to near bankruptcy, and forced the Clemens family to move to Europe in 1891. After a round-the-world lecture tour, Clemens was able to pay off his debt, but as his eldest daughter Suzy had died in the Hartford house during a return visit there in 1896, the family never returned there and he sold the house in 1904. Over the years, the house was used as a school, a library and an apartment building. It was restored in the 1960s and 1970s and is open as part of The Mark Twain House and Museum.

Charles Boardman Smith House (1875)

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One of the few surviving homes built in the nineteenth century in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood. It was built on Forest Street in 1875 for Charles Boardman Smith, of the Smith Worthington Saddlery Company, and was designed by Richard M. Upjohn in the High Victorian Gothic style. It shares similarities with Upjohn’s Connecticut State Capitol building and the (now demolished) West Middle School of 1873.

Perkins-Clark House (1861)

A Gothic Revival villa, built in 1861 on Hartford’s Woodland Street for Charles Perkins, who was Mark Twain’s lawyer. Perkins was the son of Mary Beecher Perkins, an older sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Isabella Beecher Hooker. The house’s architect, Octavius Jordan, also created homes for these three Beecher sisters in the nearby Nook Farm neighborhood. Of these, the Thomas Clap Perkins House (1855), which was later the childhood home of Katharine Hepburn, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Oakholm” (1864) were both later torn down, but the John and Isabella Beecher Hooker House (1861) survives as an apartment building. The Perkins-Clark House was bought in 1924 by Probate Judge Walter Clark. Today it serves as the offices of an architectural firm.

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Church of the Good Shepherd, Hartford (1869)

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The history of Hartford is strongly connected to the activities of Sam Colt and the manufacturing of his famous firearms. Colt’s wife, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, was a philanthropist and patron of the arts. After the death of her husband in 1862, she commissioned the architect Frederick Clarke Withers, a partner of Calvert Vaux, to design an Episcopal church as a memorial to Sam Colt and four of their children, all of whom had died within a five-year period. The church would serve the Colt armory’s workers in the industrial district known as Coltsville. In 1866 she rejected Withers’s plans and instead turned to Edward Tuckerman Potter, the architect who would later design the Mark Twain House.

Completed in 1869, Potter’s polychromatic Church of the Good Shepherd is an excellent example of the High Victorian Gothic style. It has unique features, including crossed Colt pistols and revolver parts carved in sandstone around the south “Armorer’s Door.” It also has notable stained glass windows.