The commercial building at 45-51 Pratt Street in Hartford was designed by Isaac A. Allen, Jr. Built in 1919, it is notable for its fanciful Gothic detailing, rendered in white terra-cotta. The building also clearly displays its modern use of structural steel allowing large areas of glass. The first floor detailing was later obscured by alterations to the building, but was restored in more recent years.
In this post I’m trying something new: many of the links embedded below point to articles from the Hartford Courant from the 1920s, available at iconn.org (for those with a Connecticut Library Card).
There were once two Baptist Churches on Main Street in Hartford. The First Baptist Church, originally located (from 1798 to 1831) at the corner Market and Temple Streets, moved to a second building on Main Street and finally to a third, at Main and Talcott Streets. The South Baptist Church had two edifices, the first built in the 1830s and the second, at Main and Elm, dating to 1854. In the 1920s, the two Baptist churches united to form the Central Baptist Church. Worship services continued at the First Baptist Church, while the former South Baptist Church was demolished and a new church built on the site for the combined Central Baptist congregation. While many other churches at the time had been moving to neighborhoods to the west, the Baptist Church, after considering such a move for financial reasons, decided to remain on Main Street. Ground was broken in 1924, the cornerstone was laid the following year and the completed church was dedicated in 1926. Designed by Isaac A. Allen, the church would contain a large auditorium and gymnasium.
The Georgian Revival-style Second Church of Christ Scientist, located off Columbus Green in Hartford, was designed by the architects Isaac A. Allen & Son and was built over several years in 1920s. The foundation was finished in 1924 and in 1927, with assistance from William A. Boring, the remaining superstructure was completed. The interior dates to 1929. Like such neighboring buildings as the Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court, the church was part of an attempt to create a setting in keeping with the “City Beautiful” movement of the early twentieth century.
Built in 1899, on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, for Mrs. Mary Rowell Storrs, the widow of Zalmon A. Storrs, a treasurer at Society for Savings Bank. The house was designed by the prolific Hartford architect, Isaac A. Allen, Jr. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Library has blueprints of Allen’s original drawings for the house, as well as reminiscences of growing up there, written by Mrs. Storrs’ grandson, Lewis A. Storrs, Jr. The house was constructed in the Queen Anne style, which was becoming dated at the time (compare it with Immanuel Church, just next door, completed in the same year). The house is currently the home of the Hartford Children’s Theatre.
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