Videos

My latest video is about a photograph of State Street in Hartford from c. 1900. I describe all of the buildings that lined the street and what became of them. This is an expansion of my previous post about this photo. If you enjoy the video, please remember to hit the “Like” button. Also, please consider subscribing to the channel!

This video is about crows that roosted on Washington Street in Hartford 120 years ago near the now lost home Colonel Charles A. Jewell. Four years later he had lot of crocuses on his lawn.

This video looks at buildings along Central Row, the street just south of the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut. Long gone structures include the Ellsworth Block, where the Marble Pillar restaurant had its origins in 1860, the Marble Block (Hartford’s second Marble-front building), the Universalist Church of 1824, the Hartford Museum, and the Hungerford & Cone Building, once home to many of Hartford’s lawyers. Surviving structures are two skyscrapers: the 1921 Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company Building and the 1928 Travelers Building; and an 1850 brownstone building at 6 Central Row.

I want to also share a link to a picture I couldn’t use in the video because it’s owned by the Connecticut Historical Society. It shows the old Ellsworth Block after many alterations were made to have a hall, formerly for the Elks, but by the time of the photo for the Central Labor Union, also used by the Eagles (note the Eagle depicted on the building). Honiss Oyster House is in the building, which might be surprising because it’s across the street from their longtime location on the other side of the Old State House on State Street. The picture was taken in 1924, when Honiss had to briefly relocate because the old building on State Street was being replaced. Soon after this image was taken, the restaurant moved back across the street into the new building, but this photo captures a short period of time when two Hartford institutions, Honiss and the Marble Pillar, were right near each other!

http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:9960

My latest video is about the Allyn House, a grand hotel that stood at the corner of Asylum and Trumbull Streets, where the Hartford 21 Building is today.

This is my latest video. It’s about the northwest corner of the intersection of Asylum Street with Main Street in Hartford, across from the Old State House. There were colonial farmhouses here until 1821, when Henry L. Ellsworth built a commercial building that came to be called the Catlin Building because it house the store of Julius Catlin. A later notable tenant was David Mayer, the famous Hartford jewelry seller. That building was torn down in 1897 to make way for a new and larger Catlin Building, which was in turn replaced by Hartford’s first skyscraper, built in 1912 for the Hartford National Bank and later known as the Hartford-Aetna Building. It was finally torn down in 1990 to the dismay of preservationists. Just to the north was the Hills Block, built in 1861 and replaced in 1929 by the building that was for years a J.J. Newberry store.