New Video: More Old Wethersfield

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In this video I talk about the historic buildings on Main Street in Wethersfield from the intersection with Church Street north to Hanmer Park. I cover the Greek Revival-style John Williams House, the former home and office of Dr. Erastus Cooke, the former church that’s now Griffith Academy, the former Masonic Hall, the Simeon Belden House, Comstock, Ferre & Co., the Rev. James Lockwood House, Trinity Episcopal Church, the Charles C. Hart Seed Company, the site of the Stillman Tavern (where Rochambeau stayed in 1781), the Second Empire-style Edward Robbins House, the houses of Allyn, Timothy and Henry Stillman, the Lemuel May House, the former High Street School, the houses of Francis and Capt. John Bulkeley, Ebenezer Talcott and Maj. David Hills, the Mansard-roofed. Capt. Daniel Francis House, the Cape. Jesse Goodrich House, the Porter-Belden House (some of its paneling is now in the Brooklyn Museum), Hanmer Park and the impressive brick Samuel Woodhouse, Jr. House.

New Video on Mark Twain’s Hartford Neighborhood: Nook Farm

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Mark Twain lived for 20 years in the neighborhood of Nook Farm in Hartford, Connecticut, 17 of them in his own house, which is now a museum. This video is about Mark Twain’s house in the context of Nook Farm and the houses of his neighbors, who included Harriet Beecher Stowe, John and Isabella Beecher Hooker, the young William Gillette, Charles Dudley Warner and his brother George H. Warner, and many others. Katharine Hepburn later grew up in a house in Nook Farm.

New Video: Hartford’s Lost Needham’s Corner, Main Street Before the Highway

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The building at Needham’s Corner, right at the point where Main Street in Hartford, CT bends to the northwest, existed for over 90 years before it and its neighbors was demolished circa 1961 to make way for Interstate 84. The building was erected in 1868 as the home and liquor business of Michael C. Needham and was later occupied by the liquor business of Colonel William Donague and his partner Philip S. Kennedy. During Prohibition, other businesses moved in, but from 1933, until it was taken down, the building was home to two restaurants: first the Tally-ho and then the Tiara.