Videos

New Video: Two Early American Children’s Book Authors from Connecticut

In this video I talk about two Connecticut writers of the early nineteenth century who wrote factual books for children. Jesse Olney, who served as the principal of Hartford’s First District School and later lived in Southington, wrote bestselling geography textbooks. Samuel Griswold Goodrich, who wrote under the name Peter Parley, wrote a long series of books that covered a variety of subjects, including history, geography and science. He grew up in Ridgefield, spent his young adulthood in Hartford and, after living in Massachusetts and abroad, moved to Southbury just before his death.

New Video: Lost Buildings of Pearl Street: Hello Girls, Rugs, a Police Chase & the Y.M.C.A. (Hartford, CT)

In this video I talk about lost buildings on the south side of Pearl Street, west of Trumbull Street, in Hartford. There’s a former jail that became the home of Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., a school that became a Turkish Bath House, the Telephone Building, Donchian’s Oriental Rugs, the A.M.E. Zion Church, the fire H.Q. and the Y.M.C.A. Along the way I talk about a wall that collapsed with a crash, a broken window that led to a police chase and the recreation room where the “Hello Girls” used to rest between shifts at the switchboard.

New Video: The Hartford, Plimpton’s, and Seidler & May Furniture (Lost Buildings of Pearl St., Hartford, CT)

In this video I talk about buildings on the north side of Pearl Street, west of Trumbull St., in Hartford, CT. I focus on lost buildings, including the old 1870 headquarters of the Hartford Insurance Company, Plimpton’s envelope and stationary factory, and Seidler & May’s furniture store, among others.

New Video: What used to be where the Wadsworth Atheneum & Municipal Building Stand Today in Hartford, CT?

Many buildings with interesting histories were torn down to make way for the construction of the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Municipal Building in Hartford, Connecticut. Buildings that used to stand between Main Street and Prospect Street, north of Arch Street, included the house of a notable figure from the American Revolution who was visited there by George Washington, the home of the Atheneum’s founder, the home of a prominent minister, and an Episcopal Church. Find out about these and other lost buildings in this video.

New Video: Lost Buildings of Hartford on the South Side of Pearl Street, between Main and Trumbull Sts.

This video is about the buildings that once lined the south side of Pearl Street, east of Trumbull Street in Hartford, Connecticut. In the mid-1920s, when Pearl was considered the “Wall Street of Hartford” its buildings included the State Savings Bank, the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, the National Fire Insurance Company, the Dime Savings Bank and the Judd Building. All of these were demolished by the mid-1970s.

New Video: The Connecticut Houses of Two Early Historians of the United States

This is the first in a series of videos about houses in Connecticut that were once the homes of writers who are not well known today. In this one I focus on two historians of the United States whose books were published in the early decades of the nineteenth century. One was a colonial-era minister from North Haven who served in the Revolutionary War and the other was a politician who served as a representative in Washington at the time of the War of 1812.

New Video: Lost Buildings of the North Side of Pearl Street, between Main & Trumbull Streets

This is the first of a series of three videos about Pearl Street in Hartford. Here I cover the north side of Pearl, between Main & Trumbull Streets. I talk about the Phoenix Fire Insurance Building (later owned by Connecticut General Life Insurance), which was designed by H. H. Richardson,; the Mechanics Bank Savings Bank; the Corning Building; the mansard-roofed Halls of Record (built in 1853 and demolished in 1940) and others.