Hotel Capitol (1875)

A block south on Main Street in Hartford from the Linden, on the corner of Capitol Avenue across from the Butler-McCook House, is another building, which like the Linden has a distinctive tower. The Hotel Capitol was built in 1875 by John W. Gilbert The building combines elements of the High Victorian Gothic and Second Empire styles. Isidore Wise operated it as residential hotel after he acquired it in 1905.

The Linden (1891)

The Linden is an apartment building, built in 1891 on Main Street in South Downtown in Hartford by Frank Brown and James Thomson, owners of Brown, Thompson & Company department store. Designed by Frederick Savage Newman, the Linden was designed to echo Richardson’s Cheney block, where Brown & Thompson was then located. An addition on the south, designed by John J. Dwyer, was constructed in 1895. Having fallen into disrepair, the building was rehabilitated in the 1980s, with the storefronts and interior being significantly remodeled.

Hartford Seminary (1981)

The origins of the Hartford Seminary go back to the opening of the Theological Institute of Connecticut in 1834 in East Windsor Hill. Some houses in that neighborhood, where professors at the institute once lived, have survived, but the original seminary buildings have not. In 1865, the Institute moved to Hartford and in 1885 changed its name to the Hartford Theological Seminary. After occupying several old houses on Prospect Street, in the 1880s the Sminary moved to a campus on Broad Street, across from Hartford High School. In the 1920s, the Seminary moved to a new Gothic campus (now the UCONN Law School). In 1972, the Seminary changed from being a traditional residential divinity school and became an interdenominational theological center. It was decided to sell the old campus and construct a single building, designed by Richard Meier, a post-modern architect known for his use of the color white. The new structure was built between 1978 and 1981 and in the latter year the institution’s name was changed to Hartford Seminary. (more…)

105 Asylum Street, Hartford (1855)

The commercial building at 105-115 Asylum Street, on the corner of Trumbull Street, was built around 1855 by Timothy Allyn, who owned the Allyn House hotel and served as mayor of Hartford. The building has been owned by his descendants ever since. In 1896, the building housed Willis & Wilson, a clothing store, whose owners commissioned the architect Isaac Allen, Jr. to design a new two story cast-iron front for the building. Manufactured by the George S. Lincoln Company, the intricately designed front, with broad display windows, has been a Hartford landmark ever since. From 1909 to 1989, the building was home to Willis and Wilson’s successors, Stackpole, Moore & Tryon, a clothing store which later moved down the street. The old building was recently renovated and now houses a bank.

36 Forest Street, Hartford (1895)

The Queen Anne house at 36 Forest Street in Hartford was built around 1895. It stands on the site once occupied by an earlier house that burned down in 1870. That house, rented for many years by the Rev. Nathaniel J. Burton and his wife, Rachel Pine Chase Burton, was one of the homes of the Nook Farm neighborhood, where Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe also lived. Rev. Burton settled in Hartford in 1857, when he became the pastor of the Fourth Congregational Church. In 1870, he succeeded Horace Bushnell as minister at Park Church, where he remained until his death in 1887. Burton’s son, Richard Burton, was literary critic of the Hartford Courant. He edited a posthumously published collection of his father’s Yale Lectures on Preaching, and Other Writings (1888), republished in 1896 as In Pulpit and Parish. Richard Burton, who was also a poet, later lived in the 1895 house on Forest Street.