Videos

Video about Hartford’s lost Elm Street armory, which stood across from Bushnell Park. It started out in 1869 as a skating rink and in 1877 it became the armory of the state’s First Regiment. It soon had a new facade designed by architect George Keller. Its use as an armory ceased in 1909 and the building was torn down in 1924 to make way for the building at 55 Elm Street. In the video you will hear about some of the many events that took place at the armory over about a half century. You will also learn about the controversy in 1890, when the regiment’s officers were discharged by the governor in the wake of what was called the polo war.

I have a YouTube video and a Substack post about the Rossia Insurance Company Building that was located at the corner of Broad Street and Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut from 1914 until 1969. It was built as the US branch of a Russian insurance company and was later the headquarters of the city’s Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) for 20 years. The building’s iconic sculpture of Mother Russia later stood above the Russian Lady cafe and bar on Ann Street. The original sculpture was sold in an auction in 2002 and a replica is located atop the building today. In front of the lost Rossia building were two statues of Russian bears. They were moved to Cal Berkeley in 1987.

This video is about three mansions built for three generations of Perkins family lawyers in Hartford, Connecticut. Enoch Perkins settled in Hartford in 1786 and soon built a house on Main Street that survived until 1795. His son, Thomas Clap Perkins, once lived in a house in the city’s Nook Farm neighborhood which has also been lost. Thomas’ son, Charles E. Perkins, erected a residence (with a similar Gothic Revival style to his father’s former home) in 1861, and that house survives today off Woodland Street. The fourth generation lawyer, Arthur Perkins, lived in a house on Gillett Street that no longer exists (and I don’t know of any picture of it).

My latest video is about the Garden Street Reservoir, which stood on Asylum Hill in Hartford behind where the Hartford Insurance Company Building is today. There are many interesting stories about the reservoir, including about the seal that once lived in it! In fact, there are so many stories that I couldn’t fit them all in the video, so I’ve also written a Substack article with quotations from the 1850s relating to the original digging and construction of the reservoir.

This video is about a section of Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut that is now occupied by the building at 740 Main Street that was erected by Travelers Insurance in 1956. At the time of the Revolution, the businesses of female merchant Margaret Chenevard and bookseller and apothecary Hezekiah Merrill were located here. In the early nineteenth century, property here was owned by Oliver Ellsworth. A building erected at the corner of (the now lost) Grove Street in 1856 served as a post office and for over a half century was occupied by the Hartford Times newspaper.

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My latest video is about two lost Hartford mansions. The Ely family homes stood on Main Street, where the Capitol Prep Magnet School is today. They were built in 1811 and 1830-1832 by William Ely, a wealthy shipping merchant who had a town called Elyton named for him in Alabama. Elton was later absorbed into the city of Birmingham, but the Elyton Hotel in Birmingham and Ely Street in Hartford perpetuate his name today.