Judd & Root Building (1883)

Henry C. Judd and Judson H. Root were successful wool merchants in the later nineteenth century. The firm of Judd & Root, formed in 1869, built an office building at 179 Allyn Street in Hartford in 1883. The architects were Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedell, who also designed the Goodwin Building in Hartford. Unlike that earlier Queen Anne structure, the Judd & Root Building was constructed in the Romanesque Revival style, although both buildings feature terra-cotta decoration on the upper floors. The Judd & Root Building also has a brick Renaissance Revival-style arcade on the first floor, where retail shops were located. It became known as Professional Building in the 1920s, when the ground floor housed a pharmacy and a surgical supply company and over 50 physicians and surgeons had offices above. The building was restored around 2001. (more…)

James Gallery & Soda Fountain (1790)

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette stopped at a store in Old Saybrook to make a purchase (according to tradition he bought either a pair of socks or a bar of saddle soap). Built in 1790 as a general store for the Humphrey Pratt Tavern, the building was moved in 1877 to the corner of Pennywise Lane where it became a pharmacy. A new section with a soda fountain was added in 1896 by owner Peter C. Lane, who had received his license in 1895 becoming one of the first two black pharmacists in Connecticut. From 1917 to 1967, the James Pharmacy was run by his sister-in-law and partner, Anna Louise James, the first African American woman to graduate from the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy and Connecticut’s first female African American pharmacist. Miss James, as she was called, retired in 1967 and continued to live in the building’s back apartment until her death in 1977. Miss James’s niece, Ann Lane Petry, was also a pharmacist and worked for a time at the pharmacy. Petry became known as a writer, most notably for her novel The Street (1946), which became the first book by a black woman writer with sales topping a million copies. Closed after Miss James’s retirement, the building was restored and reopened by new owners in 1984 and then had other owners. Today, it is owned by the neighboring Deacon Timothy Pratt House B&B and is known as the James Gallery & Soda Fountain.

Capitol Building (1926)

The Capitol Building, at 410 Asylum Street in Hartford, was built in 1926 as a retail and office block, a primary tenant being the newly chartered Capitol National Bank and Trust. The neo-Classical Revival structure was built by two partners, Joseph Ferrigno and Thomas Perrone and was designed by Thomas W. Lamb. Left vacant in the fall of 2007, the building was in danger of being demolished for a parking lot. City officials and preservationists successfully worked to have the Capitol Building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Capitol Center, a group headed by Milton and Betty Ruth Hollander of Stamford, then donated the building to Common Ground, a New York-based nonprofit developer. Now known as the Hollander, the building has been converted into mixed-income apartments.

Steiger Building (1927)

The Steiger Building is located on the southeast corner of Trumbull and Pratt Streets in Hartford. It was built in 1926-1928 and was the second major Hartford building built by Albert Steiger of Steiger’s Department Stores. The new building was designed by Smith & Bassette to correspond in architecture and building materials with the earlier Steiger Store, built in 1920-1921 on Main Street, at the other end of Pratt Street. That earlier Main Street building has since been replaced by a parking lot, but the one on Trumbull Street survives today.