Renaissance Revival

Hendrie Hall (1894)

Hendrie Hall, named in honor of John William Hendrie, was originally built in two sections to house Yale’s Law School. The earlier rear section was built in 1894 and the remainder in 1900. Designed by the architects Cady, Berg & See of New York in the Renaissance Revival style, with a facade resembling a Venetian palazzo, Hendrie Hall was intended to be the first of several grand Yale buildings along Elm Street. In the end, these were never built and the street’s much older wooden houses have survived. Since the Law School moved in 1931, the building has served various purposes and currently houses student music groups and offices.

Also, check out today’s entry at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts: Boston’s Old City Hall of 1865!

The Travelers Tower (1919)

The first part of the Travelers Building was constructed in 1906 as the headquarters of the Travelers Property Casualty Corporation, founded in Hartford in 1864. The company, now part of The Travelers Companies, has had many firsts in the history of insurance, including the first automobile, commercial airline and space travel policies. The first section of the Travelers building to be built, in 1906, was the Renaissance Revival-style structure facing Main Street in Hartford. The building began to expand southwards in 1912, with the 527-foot tower, featuring classical influences, being completed in 1919, at which time it was the tallest building in New England and the seventh tallest in the world. The architect was Donn Barber of New York. In 1963, after the removal of some adjacent buildings between the tower and the Wadsworth Atheneum, a new grand entrance plaza was created facing south. More recently, the building has become a nesting site for Peregrine Falcons. A camera was set up to study them, which is also available to the public online. Visitors can go to the top of the Travelers Tower in the Summer.

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Beleden (1910)

Beleden, one of Connecticut’s great high-style mansions, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol. Designed by the architect Samuel Brown of Boston, Beleden was built for William Edwin Sessions, of the Sessions Clock Company. The Sessions family operated a foundry that had been producing castings for the E.N. Welch Company, a Forrestville clock manufacturer. Around 1900, Sessions purchased E.N. Welch and in 1903 renamed it the Sessions Clock Company. In 1906, William E. Sessions, who had been living in a house on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, purchased the adjacent house and land of Nathan L. Birge. The Birge House was torn down and over the next 4 years Beleden, completed in 1910, was constructed. The U-shaped brownstone mansion was once the centerpiece of a large estate, which featured formal and English gardens, a pool, greenhouses and grape arbors. These former grounds were later divided by Beleden Gardens Drive and built-up with smaller homes. Two buildings, a coachman’s lodge and a gardener’s cottage, were originally part of the estate but are now separated from the main house by newer structures.

Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company Building (1920)

Located on Elm Street, Hartford’s “Insurance Row” of the 1920s, a building based on the style of a Florentine palace (Renaissance Revival style) served as the home of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company from 1920 to 1963, when it moved to a more modern building. The structure features a striking use of color in the pattern of its bricks and the use of glazed tiles.

The A. Everett Austin, Jr. House (1930)

On this Veteran’s Day, I went to see the play at the Hartford Stage, Chick, The Great Osram, about the life of A. Everett Austin, Jr. Known as “Chick,” Austin was the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 to 1944 and during his tenure made Hartford a center of the art world. He built up the Atheneum’s collections of both Old Master Paintings and modern art, brining to the first major exhibition of Picasso to the united States. He was also involved with the performing arts, staging the premiere of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson‘s Four Saints in Three Acts, with an all black cast, and bringing George Blanchine to America. It was the biographical play’s last day, but an exhibition called Magic Facade: The Austin House, about the home Chick Austin built on Scarborough Street in Hartford, continues through April 20.

The house, constructed in 1930, was designed by Leigh H. French, Jr., under Austin’s direction. A Palladian Villa, it was modeled on the 1596 Villa Feretti-Angeli in Dolo, Venezia, Italy. The house gives the feeling of a stage set, as it is only one room deep. When I was in high school, I heard one variation of an urban legend about the house, according to which it was a mere facade for a power station! The house was bequeathed by Chick’s widow, Helen Goodwin Austin, to the Atheneum in 1985 and has recently been restored. It is available for tours on request with a donation to the Sarah Goodwin Austin Memorial Fund.