This video is about a section of Asylum Street (south side, east of Trumbull Street) and the buildings and businesses that were once there, including the Stackpole Moore Tryon Company, Flint-Bruce Company, Horsfalls, H. F. Corning & Co. leather goods, Cone’s Hardware, Leopold Morse and a careful dentist!
Savitt Jewelers was a beloved Hartford institution, famous for the slogan P.O.M.G. (Peace of Mind Guaranteed). For half a century the store was located on the south side of Asylum Street. In this video, I talk about Savitt’s and some of the earlier businesses that existed in the same section of Asylum Street going back to the nineteenth century. These included a number of clothiers, one whose fame was compared to that of Lord Byron. Another clothing store was run by a former Hartford mayor and yet another was damaged during a major riot caused by the distribution of free suspenders.
This video is about a lost section of Allyn Street, between Trumbull and Ann Streets in Hartford Connecticut, before the Civic Center (now called the XL Center) was built in the early 1970s.
The Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut opened in January 1975. The roof collapsed in 1978 and was rebuilt in 1980. The Civic Center became the XL Center in 2007. Long before the Civic Center was built, the block of Trumbull Street between Asylum Street and Church Street had several notable (and now lost) buildings, like the lavish Allyn House Hotel, the Hartford County Court House and the City Club Building.
This is my presentation recorded live earlier today for the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum: “When Hartford Was a Retail Hub: the Growth of the City’s Great Department Stores (1890s – 1960s).”
This video is about the buildings that Hartford Hospital erected at its main campus between 1857 and 1972. Many of these are now lost, including many of the hospital’s brownstone buildings erected in the early nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
In this video I talk about a section of State Street north of the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut. In the nineteenth century this was the location of the popular United States Hotel. The hotel would be replaced by The First National Bank building, the W. T. Grant store and the Regal Theatre. These were all torn down to make way for the State House Square development in the 1980s. The famed Honiss Oyster House, the origins of which went back to 1845, was located in the basement of the hotel and later the Grant’s store before it closed in 1982.