Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

New Video: Central Row in Hartford, CT

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

New Video: The Allyn House Hotel

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.

Winchester Center Old Academy (1841)

The building known as the Winchester Center Old Academy is thought to have been built in the eighteenth century, although town accessor’s records give it a construction date (at least in its current form) of 1841 (it certainly has a Greek Revival appearance today appropriate to that period). It was partly built on land provided by Rev. Frederick Marsh, who lived nearby in the Priest Marsh House. It was later acquired by the Winchester Center Ecclesiastical Society and used for winter services, which is why it is also known as the Chapel. The building was renovated in 1910 and in 1971 became the home of the Winchester Center Historical Association.

Martin North House (1776)

In 1776, Martin North moved from Danbury to Winchester Center and built a saltbox house at what is now 102 Newfield Road. In 1941, new owners jacked up the original saltbox roof in order to add a bathroom and two full bedrooms to the rear of the second floor. There is a rear ell that now has the garage.

Historic Photograph of State Street in Hartford, c. 1900

View of State Street In Hartford from Main Street, in front of the Old State House

This historic photograph of State Street in Hartford was sent to me by Richard Walsh and is used here with his permission. It was taken c. 1900 by his great-grandfather, Richard Nichols (1850-1935). This was before the Isle of Safety was built.

On the right is the Old State House. Left of that is a row of buildings along State Street. Going from right to left the buildings are: Long’s Hotel (there is a sign for the hotel on the side of the building that mentions “lager”; building erected c. 1871, demolished in 1936); the Exchange Bank (built in 1834 with a new façade in 1869; transformed into the Far East Garden Restaurant in 1917 and demolished c. 1936); the Hartford Courant Building (built in 1880 and designed by George Keller; demolished in 1951); the Hartford National Bank (built in 1811; replaced by the Princess Theater 1912); the First National Bank (built in 1898 and designed by Ernest Flagg); a remnant of the former United States Hotel (Honiss Oyster House started in the basement) that would be replaced in the 1920s by the Regal Theater and a W. T. Grant store. Part of the sign atop the building on the far left is visible. The full sign reads “Elihu Geer’s Sons City Directory” (they published the famous Geer’s Directories of Hartford). The building was replaced in 1928 by a new one erected by Federal Bake Shops.

Other than the Old State House, the only building that survives from this photo today is the façade of the First National Bank, which was incorporated into the State House Square Complex, built in 1985.

New Video: Site of Hartford’s First Skyscraper

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.

New Video: History of the Corner of Main & Peal Streets in Hartford

Here is my second video for YouTube. Discover the history of a historic corner of Hartford, Connecticut through historic images and maps. Currently dominated by the large building at 777 Main, the northwest corner of Main & Pearl Streets in Hartford has had an interesting series of buildings. The 1600s house of early settler Thomas Olcott was replaced in the 1820s by Union Hall (where Dr. Horace Wells was inspired by a demonstration of laughing gas), followed by the building of c. 1870 of the grand headquarters of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was greatly expanded by the Hartford National Bank & Trust Company in the 1920s before being torn down in the 1960s.