New Video: Lost Hartford-Before the Phoenix Mutual “Boat” Building

This video focuses on lost buildings in the area of Hartford, Connecticut where the Phoenix Boat building was erected in 1963 and the adjacent Hartford Steam Boiler building in 1932 and 1965. Buildings that used to be here include the American Hotel, Parsons Theatre, the old headquarters of Travelers Insurance, the Hartford Street Railway trolley barns, Hartford’s first variety theater and a building where two notorious bandits were captured in 1903 and the liquor police raided during Prohibition. I also talk about buildings on the south side of the former Grove Street, including a lost house built for Silas Deane and the famed Chicken Man’s poultry shop.

CHAPTERS

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:07 Overview of the area
• 3:05 American Hotel – Clap and Treat
• 6:27 Parsons Theatre
• 7:26 Travelers HQ – Hartford Steam Boiler
• 8:21 Intro to Grove Street – Travelers Plaza Building
• 9:00 Chicken Man – William Rogers Manufacturing Co.
• 10:19 Fisher House
• 10:50 Barnabas Deane House – Open Hearth
• 16:39 St. Paul’s Church
• 17:25 View down Grove Street
• 19:30 State Street (Trolley Barns, E.S. Kibbe)
• 22:02 Bange Building (Raids during Prohibition; Capture of the Missouri Kid)
• 26:56 Chamberlin Building – Newton’s Varieties – Morris J. Rozinsky
• 30:24 Conclusion