Lost Hartford

This video is about a lost section of the old East Side neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut. I talk about buildings and businesses that used to exist on State Street, from the Intersection with Front Street to the Connecticut River. The entire area was demolished in 1957 for the building of the Founders Bridge. In the early nineteenth century this was an affluent area. Steamships arrived at the foot of State Street and there were docks and warehouses used in the West India trade. Later in the century, as the East Side became the home of immigrant communities, various businesses flourished here, including saloons, grocery and liquor wholesalers, and manufacturers of paper and of flavoring extracts. At the foot of State Street the steamboats were joined by the Connecticut Valley railroad. In the first half of the twentieth century, the shade tobacco industry dominated the area, with blocks of buildings being used as warehouses. By the 1950s there were still various businesses here, including large stores for furniture and for heating and plumbing supplies, as well as a hotel for transients. But it was all swept away for redevelopment.

This video is about the north block of State Street, between Market Street and Columbus Boulevard (the former Front Street), that today is the south edge of Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Connecticut. In the early 1800s this was part of the center of the city’s business and social life, where some of its most famous insurance companies were started and had their first offices. Other businesses flourished here for generations. Some were started by Jewish immigrants, who became notable Hartford merchants selling such goods as tobacco, hardware and clothing. Others businesses were started by Chinese immigrants, among whom were prominent importers and the proprietors of Hartford’s first Chinese restaurant. There were also tragedies, including sometimes deadly fires. Old buildings survived here into the late 1950s, when everything was demolished to make way for the redevelopment project of Constitution Plaza.

In this video for the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum I talk about the block of Main Street (between Pearl & Asylum Streets) across from the Old State House and identify 7 layers of construction that have existed here since colonial times.

This video focuses on lost buildings in the area of Hartford, Connecticut where the Phoenix Boat building was erected in 1963 and the adjacent Hartford Steam Boiler building in 1932 and 1965. Buildings that used to be here include the American Hotel, Parsons Theatre, the old headquarters of Travelers Insurance, the Hartford Street Railway trolley barns, Hartford’s first variety theater and a building where two notorious bandits were captured in 1903 and the liquor police raided during Prohibition. I also talk about buildings on the south side of the former Grove Street, including a lost house built for Silas Deane and the famed Chicken Man’s poultry shop.

CHAPTERS

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:07 Overview of the area
• 3:05 American Hotel – Clap and Treat
• 6:27 Parsons Theatre
• 7:26 Travelers HQ – Hartford Steam Boiler
• 8:21 Intro to Grove Street – Travelers Plaza Building
• 9:00 Chicken Man – William Rogers Manufacturing Co.
• 10:19 Fisher House
• 10:50 Barnabas Deane House – Open Hearth
• 16:39 St. Paul’s Church
• 17:25 View down Grove Street
• 19:30 State Street (Trolley Barns, E.S. Kibbe)
• 22:02 Bange Building (Raids during Prohibition; Capture of the Missouri Kid)
• 26:56 Chamberlin Building – Newton’s Varieties – Morris J. Rozinsky
• 30:24 Conclusion

Before Bushnell Plaza, Bushnell Tower, and the MDC building were built in the 1960s-70s, this area of Hartford, CT (across Main Street from the Municipal Building and the Wadsworth Atheneum) was filled with interesting old buildings that at one time included two Poli theaters, hotels, restaurants, shops, the original home of the American School for the Deaf, and the German neighborhood along Mulberry Street. In this video I talk about this lost neighborhood.

The old campus of Hartford Public High School, which one stood between Hopkins and Broad Streets, is fondly remembered as a lost treasure of the city’s architectural and educational history. In my latest video I talk about this lost landmark, which was destroyed to make way for highway construction in the 1960s. I also discuss the high school’s origins and its previous buildings.

It started as the Hartford Grammar School, which started in 1638, but became a true high school in 1847. From then until 1869, it was located at the corner of Asylum and Ann Streets. Its first building on Hopkins Street, built in 1869, burned down in 1882. This was replaced by what would grow into a campus complex consisting of the Hopkins Street building (first phase erected in 1882-1884, second phase in 1897-1898), the Manual Training Building (erected in 1898), and the Broad Street building (first phase erected in 1914-1915, second phase in 1917-1918). The current building on Forest Street opened in 1963.