My latest video is about how old buildings along Main Street, Arch Street, and Sheldon Street in Hartford were replaced by the massive Hartford Public Library and Ribicoff Federal Building/US Courthouse. Back in the mid-1800s there were commercial blocks, houses and a church here, as well as the bridge over the Park River. The bridge survives, but the river was buried under a highway and the Library was built above the highway.
My latest YouTube video reveals the forgotten history of the block of Main Street (west side, between Park Street and Buckingham Street). I also have a new Substack piece that gives more details about a story I mention in the video (it involves an antique fire bucket!).
Gifford Pinchot, who became the first head of the US Forest Service in Theodore Roosevelt’s administration and later served two separate stints as Governor of Pennsylvania, was born in his maternal grandfather’s home (pictured above) in Simsbury (now called the Simsbury 1820 House) on August 11, 1865. Pinchot’s father, James, erected a chateau-like mansion in Milford, PA in the mid-1880s. It was later the home of Gifford Pinchot and his wife Cornelia Bryce Pinchot. It’s not in Connecticut, but please check out my recent YouTube video about the mansion, which is called Grey Towers!
My new Substack post is about the estate of Hartford insurance executive Carl F. Sturhahn, who had herds of Jersey cattle on his dairy farm over a century ago. His farm and Tudor-style mansion were surrounded by a bend of the North Branch of the Park River (near the University of Hartford campus). The property was later subdivided as the Sunny Reach real estate development in West Hartford. The former Sturhahn barn, erected in 1918, was converted into a residence in 1939 (a contemporary view is shown above).
This video is about historic landmarks along Main Street in Hartford, north of the intersection with Albany Avenue up to the border with the Town of Windsor. The landmarks include the Fuller Brush Factory (currently undergoing redevelopment), the second oldest house in the city, another house that’s been called “The Mark Twain House of the North End,” historic cemeteries and several Black churches with long histories in the city. Many of the buildings played an important role in the city’s Jewish history.
This video is about the campus of the Hartford Theological Seminary, which stood on Broad Street in Hartford, CT. The main building, Hosmer Hall, was erected in 1879 and tensions with the contractors and the building committee led to the firing of the famous architect Francis H. Kimball. A decade later, work began on the adjacent Case Memorial Library building. The Seminary moved to a new campus on Sherman Street (now the home of UCONN Law School) in 1926 and Hosmer Hall was replaced by a Y.W.C.A. dormitory building (torn down in 1972). Before it was demolished in 1964, the former Case Memorial Library was home to the Hart School of Music from 1938 until 1963.
My latest Substack post is a supplement to my recent YouTube video on the extension of Hudson Street in Hartford in 1918. It gives more details about how a large tenement building was relocated to make way for the extension.
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