Old Pictures of Hartford

[Chessplayer]

From Hartford.gov.

Main Street: WWI parade. Hats still in style.

The women of the war.

Then a more important city - a victorious Charles Lindbergh on Main.

Cheney Building when it still had its hat.

Old State House when it was still painted white.

Bushnell Park when it still had its river.

Hartford street when it still had its trolley.

East of Main Street. A delightful, non-repetitive assortment of buildings holds a sundry array of shops. Splashes of color, brick, white, brown, and (of course) signage – chimneys, doors, and windows round out the scene. Horror vacui.

With such a hodgepodge of different owners and spaces, curious niches appear for those willing to take the risk. A direct product of the fundamentals of the built environment; the variety is dictated by a simple formula. Single owner = single business formula; shrink the scale, add more landlords, and diversity ensues.

Alleys, minorities, and wood-clad survivors. Segregation then was by block and street, today it’s by city.

Another alley, another intimate jumble of structures. Then a place for the working class, today a

gentrified version of this space could fetch upwards of a million dollars.

No skyscrapers.

Lawn mower on the capitol grounds portending a suburban future.

[mikel]

That's a beautiful city I wish I could live in.

[Chessplayer]

The thing is Mike, we know what works. Hartford was a functional, urban, livable city until it was sequestered by highways and then literally gutted by modernist urban planning. Take the parking lots by eminent domain, divide them into small parcels, zone for 3-6 stories with ground floor retail, prohibit consolidating parcels, sell them for cheap, and let ensue an Oklahoma style land grab.

Hartford could resemble Vancouver in its urban form.

[mikel]

The thing is Mike, we know what works. Hartford was a functional, urban, livable city until it was sequestered by highways and then literally gutted by modernist urban planning. Take the parking lots by eminent domain, divide them into small parcels, zone for 3-6 stories with ground floor retail, prohibit consolidating parcels, sell them for cheap, and let ensue an Oklahoma style land grab.

Hartford could resemble Vancouver in its urban form.

I would love for that to happen. But it's kind of hard to drive dollars downtown when the state government is still funding suburban sprawl.

[MichaelQReilly]

Apparently Connecticut History Online is letting people download their pictures now. In the next few weeks I'm going to try and post some of the better ones that I come across.

For now, here is some more pictures of the Great Flood of 1936.

Temple Street

South from Travelers Tower

North from Travelers Tower

Lobby of the Bond Hotel

Old Front Street

Charter Oak

Bushnell Park

Another shot of Bushnell Park with the Hollander Building in the background

Asylum looking west

Asylum looking east

[MichaelQReilly]

Here come a bunch more.

This house was on the corner of Woodland and Asylum Streets. It burned down, but the Wadsworth has one of its interiors.

This is one of the earliest Hartford picture I can find. It's a shot east from the top of the Old State House taken in 1854.

Here is another really old picture. This one is of the Charter Oak, it was taken sometime between 1850 and when the tree fell in 1856.

Just because he was my favorite president of all time, here is a picture of Teddy Roosevelt outside of Union Station.

State Street in 1897

School for the Deaf back when it was on Asylum Street.

Pearl Street Congregational Church taken 1889

This picture is of the City's Hall of Records on Pearl Street. It was taken in 1916.

Another view of Pearl Street, this time from 1881.

[MichaelQReilly]

And more....

Another shot of Pearl Street, this one from the 1920's.

Here is a firehouse on Park Street

Another shot of Park Street from 1896. This one features an old pre-revolutionary home.

A picture of the Park River from the 1890's. This one is looking East from the Main Street bridge from the place where the Library now stands. The bridge in the background is Commerce Street.

A 1901 view of the Park River and the Capitol in Bushnell Park.

Statehouse Square in 1911

The old St. Josephs Cathedral

[MichaelQReilly]

Keeping them coming...

This is the old Police Headquarters located at the corner of Market and Kinsey Streets.

A 1947 shot of the corner of Main and Temple Streets.

A shot of the Corner of Main and Pearl Streets taken in 1900.

Main and Gold Streets in 1897.

A parade down Main Street in 1916.

Another view of Main Street from 1935, this time looking North.

This one looking South down Main Street is from 1867.

A 1905 shot of the Garde Hotel. What a spectacular building. Anyone know how the city lost this one?

I love this picture. This is Ferry Street in 1884. The building in the front is a hotel called the River House. If only we still had this kind of access to the waterfront.

The corner of Elm and Trinity Streets in the 1920's

This house stood at 19 Prospect Street. It was one of the oldest buildings in the city when this picture was taken in 1911.

A view of the Center Congregational Church from the 1860's

Baseball in Colt Park in 1914

[MichaelQReilly]

I really should be working...

A view up Asylum Hill from the early 1900's. You can see the old Buckley High School in the background. What a shame that building was lost.

67 Collins Street.

A view of 61 Prospect Street taken in the 1920's

This house stood on Asylum Street. It was built in the 1780's and torn down in 1894.

445 Main Street in 1895.

Market Street in 1910.

A view of Pratt Street from 1897

This building stood across from the train station on the corner of Asylum and Union Place

American Row in 1890

Main Street 1910

Looking west on Pearl Street in the 1890's

Main street during the Great Blizzard of 1888

The Park River from Ford Street

Asylum Street in 1910

Apparently the city had a second train station in 1934

[mikel]

Stunning pictures... Where was the second train station?

[Chessplayer]

I posted a photothread of old photos of Hartford on the website archboston and received this response - "Holly crap are those old stone pillars in the river the reamins of the old connecticut bridge? I've always asked people what that used to be and no one has ever gave me a straight answer."

Does anyone know the truth of this?

[MichaelQReilly]

I posted a photothread of old photos of Hartford on the website archboston and received this response - "Holly crap are those old stone pillars in the river the reamins of the old connecticut bridge? I've always asked people what that used to be and no one has ever gave me a straight answer."

Does anyone know the truth of this?

My entirely baseless guess is that it is the remains of a mill dam.

[Theophrastus Bombastus]

http://www.parkriver.org/History2.html

Just sad really.... especially "The Plan Proposes Building a Vast Network of Parkways along the Park River Corridor.".

[beash19]

Those were amazing photos! I appreciate you showing this on this site. I'm very glad I stumbled upon them. I've always been interested in the "disappearance" of the Park River since I first heard it was buried under Hartford. And thanks for the link to the Watershed site. I'll be looking into that more as well.

[MichaelQReilly]

Here are two pictures that sum up all of Hartford's Problems:

Pre-Highways

and Post-Highways

[The Voice of Reason]

Here are two pictures that sum up all of Hartford's Problems:

Pre-Highways

and Post-Highways

those are very good pics.

It looks like the 2nd one is still pretty old. it predates all the skyscrapers of the 1980s

and the destruction of buildings for the planned skyscrapers of the early 1990s.

to me that after photo is still not terrible, but you can see that a great deal of damage had allready been done.

such a shame

[MichaelQReilly]

This one isn't exactly old pictures and it isn't really Hartford specific, but for those interested in old buildings in the state, the Historic Buildings of CT Blog is a fabulous site for learning about the many historic buildings in the state. The guy who does it updates it every day and does a great job of digging up a ton of information from all across the web in each of his posts. This in one of the first sites that I visit each day. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

[MichaelQReilly]

This site is a large collection of old postcards of Hartford. There is some really great stuff in there like this one of Bushnell Park, the Park River, and the old high school.

[The Voice of Reason]

there were maybe 80 old photos of the Front Street area thruought time at the Big MO on Saturday night. Wish I could have shared them all here.

they followed a timeline from about 1900 till the district was destroyed and highways built etc...

also a model of the origonal Constitution plaza.

people say we got a cheapened down version... and while that may be true I prefer what we got to what was planned. The boat building was to look just like 100 or 1 constitution plaza, jut a rectangle. also the hotel was only to be a little bigger than it is, and the low rise buildings in the North were to be yet another clone of 1, and 100. but the arena was bad. I much rather have the Hartford steam boiler building, and 2 towers of 460 Columbus over that arena and its planned parking.

the only real loss is the north end of the plazxa where those bunker like buildings stand now.

[Bill Mocarsky]

there were maybe 80 old photos of the Front Street area thruought time at the Big MO on Saturday night. Wish I could have shared them all here.

they followed a timeline from about 1900 till the district was destroyed and highways built etc...

also a model of the origonal Constitution plaza.

people say we got a cheapened down version... and while that may be true I prefer what we got to what was planned. The boat building was to look just like 100 or 1 constitution plaza, jut a rectangle. also the hotel was only to be a little bigger than it is, and the low rise buildings in the North were to be yet another clone of 1, and 100. but the arena was bad. I much rather have the Hartford steam boiler building, and 2 towers of 460 Columbus over that arena and its planned parking.

the only real loss is the north end of the plazxa where those bunker like buildings stand now.

I have a book that shows that model. I don't think it represented the original concept.

What I think people meant about the cheapened down version was that the concept wasn't fulfilled.

1) We didn't get the residential

2) The whole idea about the plaza level was that it was supposed to match the level of Main Street. I think it was called "level 68". The link to Main Street never happened.

I once saw a picture of a 30 story building for the Phoenix site.

[kma2053]

I have a book that shows that model. I don't think it represented the original concept.

What I think people meant about the cheapened down version was that the concept wasn't fulfilled.

1) We didn't get the residential

2) The whole idea about the plaza level was that it was supposed to match the level of Main Street. I think it was called "level 68". The link to Main Street never happened.

I once saw a picture of a 30 story building for the Phoenix site.

 

How do I see these photos?  My grandparents owned a store at 143 Front street and I have been trying to find old maps and/or old Pictures of Front street back then.  Does anyone know where I can find pictures?  Thank you so much.  I'm on a desperate hunt and not getting very far.

[The Voice of Reason]

hmmm

try the CT historical society?

 

the big MO event I referenced supports riverfront recapture, so maybe if you reach out to riverfront recapture and the event fron 2010 someone might remember

 

the event was held in the current location of Front Street theater

 

thats reallky all I know

 

oh that and there is a new CEO at riverfront recapture as of about a week ago