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.
In 1796, John Pelton, Jr. erected a one and a half-story gambrel-roofed house at what is now 64 Indian Hill Avenue in Portland. At a later date the house was raised to a full two stories, with the second story having a hewn overhang above the first story.
In 1850 a small square building was erected to serve as a temporary lock-up near where the railway Depot is located today in village of Noank in Groton. In 1913 the building was sold and moved to its current lot at 87 Main Street in Noank. It was then used for various purposes over the years, including a barbershop, a speakeasy, and an insurance office, before becoming a private residence. Additions over time have included a rear kitchen, side garage, and a back porch.
Allen Avery (1838-1915) was a businessman in Mystic who was very active in the local community. He worked as a ship joiner before entering the undertaking business, later opening a furniture store and then engaging in the real estate. He is associated with several houses in Mystic, including his 1874 house on Pearl Street on the Groton side and a later house on East Main Street on the Stonington side. In about 1879 he also erected the building (pictured above) at 6 Pearl Street. It’s described in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for the Mystic River Historic District as a “1 1/2-story cottage with roof of four gables, one in each direction,” as well as “Italianate solid brackets at the eaves returns of the front gable.” Also, “Window caps have small brackets.”
As related in the booklet The Mystic River Historical Society: Our First 40 Years (researched and written by Patricia M. Schaefer) the building was purchased in 1985 by Sandor Balint, first violinist
of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He and his wife Joyce, who was also a violinist, felt it was a good omen that the house had been owned in 1912 by a man named Welcome Fidler. According to Kelly Sullivan, Fidler was a carriage-maker from Woodville, Rhode Island, where he was the subject of frequent raids by the local authorities for running illegal saloons. He then relocated to the building on Pearl Street in Mystic, where he operated a lunch room and pool hall on the ground floor and lived upstairs. He had not left his old ways behind however, because in 1909 and again six years later, he was raided by the police, who seized quantities of whiskey.
Built in 1878, the house at 30 School Street in the Hazardville section of Enfield has many features of the Italianate style of architecture, including a square shape with bracketed cornice, a rooftop cupola/belvedere, and a one-story columned entrance portico and side porch.
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