Videos

This video focuses on the buildings of Saint Francis Hospital that were built before the early 1970s, some of which survive and some of which are lost. These include the old Chinese Education Mission and Saint Thomas Seminary buildings on Collins Street that were later demolished. I also talk about the former National Fire Insurance Company Building on Farmington Avenue that the hospital acquired in the 1970s and the historic Collins and Dunham Houses once stood there. I end by briefly mentioning the hospital’s more recent buildings, including the parking garage currently under construction.

This video gives a brief history of the houses on Charter Oak Place in the city of Hartford, Connecticut. I talk about houses that survive from the nineteenth century as well as a few houses that have been lost.

This video is about an early movie theater in Hartford that existed on Asylum Street from 1912 until 1927. The Empire Theater was a conversion of a former Methodist Church that was built in 1860. Stories in this video include tales from the snow storm of 1915, a boy who fell asleep and was locked in the theater, and the acrimonious end of the Empire.

In this video I talk about 10 lost movie theaters that once existed in downtown Hartford, Connecticut. I also mention several more theaters that existed beyond downtown.

This is a video about the Dutch Point power plant that stood along the Connecticut River in Hartford from 1904 until 1962. I also talk about the South Meadow power plant, the burying of the Park River and construction of the highway.

In this video I talk about the great log drives down the Connecticut River from northern New Hampshire to Massachusetts and to Hartford, Connecticut, where millions of feet of logs were brought (circa 1876 to 1885) to the saw mill at Dutch Point.

This is the first in a series of videos about Dutch Point in Hartford, Connecticut. This peninsula, formed by the junction of the Park (or Little) River and the Connecticut River was called Dutch Point because it was near the Dutch trading post called the House of Hope that was here in the 17th century. By the 19th century, Dutch Point was the site of shipbuilding and a saw mill operation.