This video is a series of extended quotations from the Hartford Courant newspaper printed between 1905 and 1908 about old buildings that existed along the Connecticut River in Hartford, Connecticut, some that were lost when the Bulkeley Bridge was built in 1908 and some when the Valley Railroad came through in 1871.
This video is about a house that was built circa 1780 in Hartford, Connecticut for the Revolutionary War diplomat Silas Deane. Deane never got to live in the house (in fact he never set foot in it!), but his brother Barnabas moved in instead. The house was built by the Scottish builder William Spratts, who had been a prisoner of war. He built a number of other high-style residences in Connecticut at the time. The Deane House was torn down in 1926.
In so many of my other videos I describe what has been lost and destroyed in downtown Hartford, CT. But in this video I talk about the great buildings that survive from the days before the great mid-century urban renewal projects, from old houses (Butler-McCook, Barnard & Hills Houses), to later residential and commercial buildings (the Hotel Capitol, McCone Block, Cheney Building & the Linden), and then from department stores (Sage-Allen, Wise-Smith, G. Fox) and office towers (Hartford Trust Co. and Travelers), to churches (Center and South Congressional, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Peter’s, South Park Methodist & Central Baptist) and great public and institutional buildings (South Green Fire Station, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Municipal Building & Old State House). Which are your favorites?
Historic structures like the original Connecticut State House of 1719, the Jeremiah Wadsworth House, which stood on the site of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, some of the city’s lost colonial taverns and coffee houses, and a tavern that still stands in Andover, CT play a role in my new video about the historic first meeting of George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau in 1780.
In the 20th century, large sections of downtown Hartford were torn down to be replaced by new buildings and massive urban renewal projects. But the worst situations are when buildings were torn down and only replaced by a parking lot. In this video I give 8 examples of what was lost.
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Large sections of downtown Hartford, Connecticut were destroyed in the 1950s to 1980s to make way for large-scale building projects. We may debate the quality and benefits of what was built, but the lost neighborhoods can not be replaced. Let me know in the comments what you think of my list of obliterations.
John Pierpont Morgan, the famous banker of the Gilded Age, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. His grandfather, Joseph Morgan, had arrived in Hartford in 1816 and had success as the owner of the popular Exchange Coffee House. Joseph’s son, Junius Spencer Morgan, was a partner in a Hartford dry goods business before he left to become a prominent banker in London. J. Pierpont Morgan was born in his grandfather’s house on Asylum Street in 1837 and his childhood home was on Farmington Avenue. His Hartford cousins were the prominent Goodwin brothers. J. S. and J. P. Morgan were generous benefactors of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. They are buried in the city’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.