My latest video is about Travelers Tower which was built in 4 stages between 1906 and 1927. The tower was built on the site of several older structures, including the Universalist Church and a house designed by Henry Austin. Two buildings that once housed the Aetna Insurance companies were later demolished to create the plaza just south of Travelers Tower.
In 1903, Danbury native Alexander White donated three acres of land for the newly established Danbury Normal School (now Western Connecticut State University). The following year construction on the building on campus known as Old Main began (it was completed in 1905). Designed by the Boston architectural firm of Hartwell, Richardson & Driver, it is the oldest building on the university’s midtown campus and houses numerous administrative offices, such as the Registrar, Cashier and Admissions.
Fairfield Hall, on the campus of Western Connecticut State University, is a residence hall built in 1917. The cupola atop the colonial revival-style building was featured on the university’s old logo, before a rebranding in 2018. Fairfield Hall was WCSU’s first residence hall and originally accommodated 84 students, all women. The building was renovated in 1957 with 46 units being added. It was renovated again in 2008 and is now a coed dorm for first year students.
This is an 1849 lithograph entitled “View of Hartford, CT from the Deaf and Dumb Asylum.” It looks eastward from Asylum Hill. There are 12 churches in the view, only 3 of which are still standing today.
The campus of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut is famous for its Gothic Revival architecture. But long before the college moved to its current campus in the 1870s, it was located downtown, on a now lost campus on the hill where the state capitol building stands today. In this video I talk about the lost Greek Revival-style buildings of Trinity’s original campus, as well as three buildings that have been lost from the current campus.
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In the early 20th century, Harry Bond had a hospitality empire in Hartford, CT. He opened the Bond Restaurant downtown in 1908. The Hotel Bond on Asylum Street was built in two stages: 1912-1913 and 1920-1921. Bond also acquired two other nearby hotels, which he named the Bond Annex and the Bondmore. Bond died in 1935 and his hotel empire, facing competition from the new Hotel Statler, eventually went bankrupt in the 1950s. Special thanks to Lawrence Plourde for permission to use his photographs of the Thomas Hooker (formerly Bond Annex) Hotel.
Today, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hebron has a brick Federal style appearance, but when it was erected in 1826, it was more extravagantly Gothic, with numerous turrets and pinnacles. It was thought to have been modeled on a church that Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis had seen in Italy (and was even referred to as “Jarvis’ Folly”). At the time, Bishop Brownell said that it was the second most beautiful church in the diocese after Trinity Church in New Haven. An unusual feature of the design is that the tower is located at the rear of the building rather than the front. The building has had a number of alterations and renovations over the years. The parish was established in 1734, when the controversial Congregational minister Rev. John Bliss and his followers declared themselves for the Church of England and formed the sixth Episcopal church in Connecticut.
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