This video is about what once existed on a block of Asylum Street in Hartford, CT where the City Place office towers were built in the 1980s. This included the house where J. P. Morgan was born, the sites of many historic Hartford businesses (including music stores, Turkish baths, bakeries and clothing stores), and a controversial mural that sparked public debate in the 1970s.
In this video I talk about the growth and development of G. Fox & Company department store from its early days in 1847 as a small fancy goods store, to a large department store occupying several contiguous buildings. I focus on the various buildings the store occupied. I end by describing the fire that destroyed the store in 1917. In another video I will describe the rebirth of the store and its continued expansion into the 1960s.
A mansion erected by a member of the Vanderbilt family once stood along Farmington Avenue in West Hartford, Connecticut. In this video I explain how the mansion came to be built, mention a notable artistic couple that was married in it, and tell how the mansion was replaced by an exclusive housing development.
This video is about Brown, Thomson & Company, a department store that existed in Hartford Connecticut from 1866 to 1969. I talk about the store’s history with a focus on the buildings the business occupied. I also talk about another store, the Bee Hive, which existed from 1847 until 1894, when it was absorbed by Brown Thomson’s.
This video is about Wise, Smith & Company, a department store in Hartford, Connecticut that existed from 1897 to 1954. I talk about the buildings that came before Wise-Smith and the various structures the company erected over the years. I also talk about the Hartford branch of E. J. Korvette, which occupied the Wise-Smith building from 1957 to 1971.
This video is about the various buildings of Sage-Allen department store in Hartford, Connecticut. It first opened in 1889 at the corner of Main and Pratt Streets in a building previously occupied by the older dry goods store of Talcott & Post. In 1898, Sage-Allen erected its own building across the street, right next door to a building opened in 1894 by R. Ballerstein’s millinery store. Major expansions or alterations to Sage-Allen were opened in 1905, 1911, 1917, 1929 and 1967. The Hartford store closed in 1990.
This video is about lost buildings and the communities that erected them in a section of the old East Side of Hartford, Connecticut that was transformed by redevelopment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Starting on the south side of Talcott Street, east of Market Street, I talk about St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church. Moving to the northeast corner of Market and Talcott Streets, I talk about the Brown School, where generations of children on the east side were educated. The school was built in 1868 and had annexes erected in 1897 and 1923. Next, I move to the northwest side of the intersection to talk about the Talcott Street Congregational Church, which was home to Hartford’s oldest African American congregation. The first church building was erected here in 1826 and the second in 1906. Next, I talk about three buildings that once stood along Market Street north of the intersection with Morgan Street. First is a silk mill erected in 1854 where ribbon was produced by the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company of Manchester, Connecticut. Next, I talk about Ados Israel Synagogue, erected in 1899 by Hartford’s oldest Orthodox congregation. Lastly I talk about the Union Settlement, a charitable organization that started as the Union for Home Work.