This video looks at buildings along Central Row, the street just south of the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut. Long gone structures include the Ellsworth Block, where the Marble Pillar restaurant had its origins in 1860, the Marble Block (Hartford’s second Marble-front building), the Universalist Church of 1824, the Hartford Museum, and the Hungerford & Cone Building, once home to many of Hartford’s lawyers. Surviving structures are two skyscrapers: the 1921 Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company Building and the 1928 Travelers Building; and an 1850 brownstone building at 6 Central Row.
I want to also share a link to a picture I couldn’t use in the video because it’s owned by the Connecticut Historical Society. It shows the old Ellsworth Block after many alterations were made to have a hall, formerly for the Elks, but by the time of the photo for the Central Labor Union, also used by the Eagles (note the Eagle depicted on the building). Honiss Oyster House is in the building, which might be surprising because it’s across the street from their longtime location on the other side of the Old State House on State Street. The picture was taken in 1924, when Honiss had to briefly relocate because the old building on State Street was being replaced. Soon after this image was taken, the restaurant moved back across the street into the new building, but this photo captures a short period of time when two Hartford institutions, Honiss and the Marble Pillar, were right near each other!
My latest video is about the Allyn House, a grand hotel that stood at the corner of Asylum and Trumbull Streets, where the Hartford 21 Building is today.
View of State Street In Hartford from Main Street, in front of the Old State House
This historic photograph of State Street in Hartford was sent to me by Richard Walsh and is used here with his permission. It was taken c. 1900 by his great-grandfather, Richard Nichols (1850-1935). This was before the Isle of Safety was built.
On the right is the Old State House. Left of that is a row of buildings along State Street. Going from right to left the buildings are: Long’s Hotel (there is a sign for the hotel on the side of the building that mentions “lager”; building erected c. 1871, demolished in 1936); the Exchange Bank (built in 1834 with a new façade in 1869; transformed into the Far East Garden Restaurant in 1917 and demolished c. 1936); the Hartford Courant Building (built in 1880 and designed by George Keller; demolished in 1951); the Hartford National Bank (built in 1811; replaced by the Princess Theater 1912); the First National Bank (built in 1898 and designed by Ernest Flagg); a remnant of the former United States Hotel (Honiss Oyster House started in the basement) that would be replaced in the 1920s by the Regal Theater and a W. T. Grant store. Part of the sign atop the building on the far left is visible. The full sign reads “Elihu Geer’s Sons City Directory” (they published the famous Geer’s Directories of Hartford). The building was replaced in 1928 by a new one erected by Federal Bake Shops.
Other than the Old State House, the only building that survives from this photo today is the façade of the First National Bank, which was incorporated into the State House Square Complex, built in 1985.
Site of the First Skyscraper in Hartford, CT (History of the NW corner of Main and Asylum Streets)
This is my latest video. It’s about the northwest corner of the intersection of Asylum Street with Main Street in Hartford, across from the Old State House. There were colonial farmhouses here until 1821, when Henry L. Ellsworth built a commercial building that came to be called the Catlin Building because it house the store of Julius Catlin. A later notable tenant was David Mayer, the famous Hartford jewelry seller. That building was torn down in 1897 to make way for a new and larger Catlin Building, which was in turn replaced by Hartford’s first skyscraper, built in 1912 for the Hartford National Bank and later known as the Hartford-Aetna Building. It was finally torn down in 1990 to the dismay of preservationists. Just to the north was the Hills Block, built in 1861 and replaced in 1929 by the building that was for years a J.J. Newberry store.
Here is my second video for YouTube. Discover the history of a historic corner of Hartford, Connecticut through historic images and maps. Currently dominated by the large building at 777 Main, the northwest corner of Main & Pearl Streets in Hartford has had an interesting series of buildings. The 1600s house of early settler Thomas Olcott was replaced in the 1820s by Union Hall (where Dr. Horace Wells was inspired by a demonstration of laughing gas), followed by the building of c. 1870 of the grand headquarters of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was greatly expanded by the Hartford National Bank & Trust Company in the 1920s before being torn down in the 1960s.
Hello everyone! Please check out my first YouTube video! It’s about some interesting frogs that lived in Hartford over 120 years ago. If you enjoy the video, please consider hitting the “Like” button and subscribing to the channel– It’s called “History with Dan.”
Significant alteration in 1913-1914 to plans by Donn Barber
Location: 214-222 (later 650) Main Street
Previous Buildings on the Site
In the early 1860s, two buildings stood at the northeast corner of Main Street and what was then called Wadsworth Alley (now Atheneum Square), across from the Wadsworth Atheneum. At 220-222 Main Street (pre-1898 numbering) was the Phillips Building, originally built in the late eighteenth century for the publishing firm of Hudson & Goodwin. In 1896, the company published American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, the first cookbook written by an American. They also published the Hartford Courant there from 1796 to 1815. Just south of the Philips Building was the Isaac Toucey House, a Federal-style house built in the first decade of the nineteenth century for Chauncey Gleason, a dry goods merchant. It was then owned by Cyprian Nichols, whose daughter Catherine married Isaac Toucey in 1827. Toucey (1792-1868) would serve as governor of Connecticut, attorney general of the United States in the administration of James K. Polk and secretary of the navy in the administration of James Buchanan. Both of these buildings were demolished in 1868 to make way for the new building of the Charter Oak Life Insurance Company.
Constructing the Charter Oak Life Insurance Building
The new six-story building, designed by the prominent Boston architectural firm of Bryant & Rogers, was erected in 1869-1870. A number of articles in the Hartford Courant discussed the proposed building in 1868:
The design for the new building which is to be erected next spring by the Charter Oak Life Insurance Company upon the old Toucey estate, corner of Main street and Wadsworth avenue, comes from the studio of the celebrated Boston architects, Bryant & Rodgers [sic], the latter now being in the city on business appertaining to the erection of the building. The position of the Atheneum, standing upon the opposite side of Wadsworth avenue, renders the site for the insurance building doubly valuable, and enables the company to secure fine offices on Wadsworth avenue, which they propose to occupy themselves, while the Main street portion will be rented for banking or similar purposes.
“The New Charter Oak Life Building.” (Hartford Courant, August 17, 1868)
The street facades are to be faced with the elegant material of which the Boston City Hall and Horticultural Hall are constructed, the same being obtained from the quarry of the Granite Railway company in Concord, N.H. [. . . .]
Both elevations are designed in the French Renaissance style, with details believed to be more ornate than heretofore introduced into the street edifices of our principal cities.
“Charter Oak Life Building. A Magnificent Structure–Detailed Description of It.” (Hartford Courant, November 18, 1868)
The Charter Oak Life Insurance Company ceased operations in 1888 and the building became the home of the Aetna Life Insurance Company (the Aetna Fire Insurance Company was located in a building adjacent to the north). For many years, the Aetna National Bank also had quarters in the building. Their offices underwent major alterations in 1899-1900 and the results were described in the Courant:
The new and enlarged quarters take in the two south offices in the Aetna building, on the corner of Main and Atheneum streets, the frontage being 40 feet on Main street and 80 on Atheneum. The entrance is on Main street, through large doors of solid mahogany. The Interior is a great room. 70 feet in length by 35 feet in width, and this is only broken by the directors’ room in the rear at the southeast corner.
“Fine Bank Offices. Reconstructed Home of Aetna National Bank.” (Hartford Courant, July 27, 1900)
The following year there was a similar remodeling of the offices on the north side of the building on behalf of Aetna Life to accommodate the company’s increasing business. The Hartford Courant admired the building’s new Main Street entryway, observing
Just now a revolving floor has been hung for the winter season, and this is to work by power, a small electric motor being tuned in such a way that the door will be continually moving, making the entrance to the building in a way automatic. In case the person entering should by any means make a mistake and become an obstruction, the door will stop until he has freed himself and then will start again on its revolutions.
“Aetna Life’s Door. Entrance Hall and Stairways Greatly Improved.” (Hartford Courant, January 22, 1902)
Major Alterations
Detail from a postcard
A decade later the company required even more space and in 1913-1914 dramatically altered the building (see image above) by adding four stories and replacing the original mansard roof with a much flatter roof. The project, to plans by architect Donn Barber, required a significant feat of engineering:
The construction of the additional floors above the original building is of such a nature that no weight rests upon the foundation of the original building, the weight of the addition resting upon eight concrete and steel piers.
“Removing Staging at Aetna Building.” (Hartford Courant, October 29, 1914)
The Aetna Life Insurance Company building will be unveiled next week. The event will be marked by little or no ceremony, although it is near unique in the annals of architecture. Statues, tablets and monuments usually are the only things so honored, and few buildings, especially of the size of the Aetna life, are able in later years to include such an occasion in their history. But the Aetna Life will. For months it has been shrouded in a veil or scaffolding that has clouded, even if it has not hidden, the work of erecting four wore stories on the top of the old edifice. All this will disappear within a few days, and this is the unveiling.
“Ready to Unveil Aetna Building.” (Hartford Courant, November 21, 1914)
The completed building continued to serve Aetna until the company built its massive new home office on Farmington Avenue in 1931. The old building on Main Street was then rented out until it was purchased by the neighboring Aetna Fire Insurance Company in 1939. The Aetna property was acquired by Travelers Insurance in 1957 and old building was demolished in 1963 to make way for Travelers Plaza, the grand entrance to the Travelers Tower.
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