Lost Hartford

This video is about three mansions built for three generations of Perkins family lawyers in Hartford, Connecticut. Enoch Perkins settled in Hartford in 1786 and soon built a house on Main Street that survived until 1795. His son, Thomas Clap Perkins, once lived in a house in the city’s Nook Farm neighborhood which has also been lost. Thomas’ son, Charles E. Perkins, erected a residence (with a similar Gothic Revival style to his father’s former home) in 1861, and that house survives today off Woodland Street. The fourth generation lawyer, Arthur Perkins, lived in a house on Gillett Street that no longer exists (and I don’t know of any picture of it).

My latest video is about the Garden Street Reservoir, which stood on Asylum Hill in Hartford behind where the Hartford Insurance Company Building is today. There are many interesting stories about the reservoir, including about the seal that once lived in it! In fact, there are so many stories that I couldn’t fit them all in the video, so I’ve also written a Substack article with quotations from the 1850s relating to the original digging and construction of the reservoir.

This video is about a section of Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut that is now occupied by the building at 740 Main Street that was erected by Travelers Insurance in 1956. At the time of the Revolution, the businesses of female merchant Margaret Chenevard and bookseller and apothecary Hezekiah Merrill were located here. In the early nineteenth century, property here was owned by Oliver Ellsworth. A building erected at the corner of (the now lost) Grove Street in 1856 served as a post office and for over a half century was occupied by the Hartford Times newspaper.

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My latest video is about two lost Hartford mansions. The Ely family homes stood on Main Street, where the Capitol Prep Magnet School is today. They were built in 1811 and 1830-1832 by William Ely, a wealthy shipping merchant who had a town called Elyton named for him in Alabama. Elton was later absorbed into the city of Birmingham, but the Elyton Hotel in Birmingham and Ely Street in Hartford perpetuate his name today.

This video gives the background on the Keney Memorial Clock Tower in Hartford, Connecticut. It was built on the site of Henry and Walter Keney’s wholesale grocery business and next door was the brother’s Greek Revival style mansion, which is now lost. There is doubt about whether the Tower was built as a monument to Keney business or to the mother who raised them.

This is a compilation of my videos about Hartford department stores: Steiger-Vedder, Sage-Allen, Wise-Smith, Brown-Thomson, G. Fox, and the West Hartford Lord & Taylor.