Check out my latest Substack post: The building that is now home to Black-Eyed Sally’s in Hartford was several stories taller when it was built in 1855 and for decades it was occupied by a bookdinding business run by a man who once had a difficult buggy ride with Mark Twain.
Gifford Pinchot, who became the first head of the US Forest Service in Theodore Roosevelt’s administration and later served two separate stints as Governor of Pennsylvania, was born in his maternal grandfather’s home (pictured above) in Simsbury (now called the Simsbury 1820 House) on August 11, 1865. Pinchot’s father, James, erected a chateau-like mansion in Milford, PA in the mid-1880s. It was later the home of Gifford Pinchot and his wife Cornelia Bryce Pinchot. It’s not in Connecticut, but please check out my recent YouTube video about the mansion, which is called Grey Towers!
My new Substack post is about the estate of Hartford insurance executive Carl F. Sturhahn, who had herds of Jersey cattle on his dairy farm over a century ago. His farm and Tudor-style mansion were surrounded by a bend of the North Branch of the Park River (near the University of Hartford campus). The property was later subdivided as the Sunny Reach real estate development in West Hartford. The former Sturhahn barn, erected in 1918, was converted into a residence in 1939 (a contemporary view is shown above).
My latest Substack post is a supplement to my recent YouTube video on the extension of Hudson Street in Hartford in 1918. It gives more details about how a large tenement building was relocated to make way for the extension.
Today is the eighteenth anniversary of this website, which started on April 30, 2007 with a post about the Joseph Webb House (back when the house was still painted “Webb Red”!). Since then, I also started a similar website about Massachusetts, I wrote two books about historic Hartford, started a YouTube channel History with Dan Sterner, and most recently launched a Substack called Remembering Old Hartford (and another one called That’s Historical). Thank you all for reading and watching! If you would like to support my work, please consider becoming a paid Substack subscriber, a member of my YouTube channel, or visit my Ko-fi page.
My latest Substack article is about Buckingham Square Park, which is located at the corner of Main Street and Buckingham Street in downtown Hartford. I describe the park’s origins, which go back to 1830, and then explore times when the park was a subject of public debate: the 1840s, when a grocer wanted to place hay scales there; the 1880s, when a plan by the city to landscape the park led to complaints by the neighbors; and 1930, when many disliked the unemployed men who gathered there to sit on benches at the onset of the Great Depression.
There was once a hotel at the corner of Trumbull and Pratt Streets in Hartford. When it was torn down in the early 1920s it was called the Clifton House. Earlier, it was known as the Madison House and before that, in the early 1890s, as the Pratt Street House. My latest Substack article is about an unusual incident that took place at the hotel in 1892.
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