This video features fifteen houses considered to be mansions in their time that were built between 1798 and the 1870s in Hartford, CT. They range from the elegant Federal-style residences of the early 1800s to later homes built in the Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate and French Second Empire styles.
This video is a series of extended quotations from the Hartford Courant newspaper printed between 1905 and 1908 about old buildings that existed along the Connecticut River in Hartford, Connecticut, some that were lost when the Bulkeley Bridge was built in 1908 and some when the Valley Railroad came through in 1871.
This video is about a house that was built circa 1780 in Hartford, Connecticut for the Revolutionary War diplomat Silas Deane. Deane never got to live in the house (in fact he never set foot in it!), but his brother Barnabas moved in instead. The house was built by the Scottish builder William Spratts, who had been a prisoner of war. He built a number of other high-style residences in Connecticut at the time. The Deane House was torn down in 1926.
Historic structures like the original Connecticut State House of 1719, the Jeremiah Wadsworth House, which stood on the site of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, some of the city’s lost colonial taverns and coffee houses, and a tavern that still stands in Andover, CT play a role in my new video about the historic first meeting of George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau in 1780.
In the 20th century, large sections of downtown Hartford were torn down to be replaced by new buildings and massive urban renewal projects. But the worst situations are when buildings were torn down and only replaced by a parking lot. In this video I give 8 examples of what was lost.
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Large sections of downtown Hartford, Connecticut were destroyed in the 1950s to 1980s to make way for large-scale building projects. We may debate the quality and benefits of what was built, but the lost neighborhoods can not be replaced. Let me know in the comments what you think of my list of obliterations.
John Pierpont Morgan, the famous banker of the Gilded Age, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. His grandfather, Joseph Morgan, had arrived in Hartford in 1816 and had success as the owner of the popular Exchange Coffee House. Joseph’s son, Junius Spencer Morgan, was a partner in a Hartford dry goods business before he left to become a prominent banker in London. J. Pierpont Morgan was born in his grandfather’s house on Asylum Street in 1837 and his childhood home was on Farmington Avenue. His Hartford cousins were the prominent Goodwin brothers. J. S. and J. P. Morgan were generous benefactors of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. They are buried in the city’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.