If you could create one significant city in CT

[Bill Mocarsky]

Well aware of that dike.

The way I see it, even with a dike, there is room for a wider linear park than we have now, and a wall (just like in Rome) and then some more park on top of that wall, a surface street, and water facing storefronts/residential buildings zoned with a maximum height of 150' and minimum height of 6 floors.

this line of buildings would integrate with the levey and they would allow street interaction to the West at the lower level facing the city and at an upper level facing the river and the park. there would be occasional stairs and even less ocasionally handycapped access to the lower linear park(like at the mortenson plaza...

This is pretty much how I see it.......even with the (low profile) highway there. No traffic using the 84/91 interchange would use this segment, resulting in a narrower highway. The levee would be higher than the highway, so the park on top of the wall would also cover the highway.

All traffic using the 84/91 interchange would use either the Charter Oak Bridge or a new Bridge near the Meadows.

What I would really like to do is develop a new alignment for 84 between Union Station and the new bridge.

[MadVlad]

I've always felt that the State and City of Hartford had their heads up their asses when it came to the city. There is no reason why Hartford can't be a world class city. Great position, awesome hub, just needs some leadership, investment, tlc, and some hard work. All of those seem to be in short supply around the city...

[MichaelQReilly]

I am pretty sure Hartford would still have been the major inland port.

It IS the end of the tidal river, and there were major port activities in Hartford,Wethersfield. The thing is that those early colonial settlements depended on supplies up the river to the dutch fort, and in turn shipped pelts down river.

Hartford would potentially be smaller with a major port city just 30 miles away, but it would still be the biggest city up river.

Albany was founded as the Norther fur trading outpost and shipped down river.

That Dutch fort went a long way towards making Hartford habitable when middletown was not.

re middletown according to Wikipedia...

settled in1650 by first europeans

During the 18th century, Middletown became the largest and most prosperous settlement in Connecticut. By the time of the American Revolution, Middletown was a thriving port, comparable to Boston or New York in importance, with one-third of its citizens involved in merchant and maritime activities. Slavery was part of the early economy of Middletown; African slaves were brought to the town in 1661 from Barbados; by 1756 Middletown had the third largest African slave population in the state of Connecticut—218 slaves to 5,446 Europeans.

The port's decline began in the early 19th century with strained American-British relations and resulting trade restrictions, which led to the War of 1812. The port never recovered;During this period, Middletown became a major center for firearms manufacturing. Numerous gun manufacturers in the area supplied the majority of pistols to the United States government during the War of 1812. After that war, however, the center of this business passed to Springfield, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, and New Haven, Connecticut. (See also History of Connecticut industry)

apparently Middletown became irrelevent when rail passedmiddletown by

Conversely, Hartford was founded in 1623 by the dutch and 1635 by Hooker, so people were living there for 27 years when Middletown was settled. But I can not easily find what made hartford rise to prominence to the point that I was then able to be chosen as a rail station etc...

the biggest game changer was the formation of Hartford insurance, but what caused the the to be strong enough to attract the merchants that had the gumption to do so...

I would be interested to see extremely early population figures for New Englands towns such as that number for middletown from 1756

To expand on this, Hartford, and for that matter Albany, are where they are because they are as far as you could take a sail powered ship up river. The settlers/traders went as far up the river as they could, then looked around for a decent landing area and built their trading post/settlement there.

We don't even realize it now, but prior to the advent of railroads, it was much easier to travel by water than it was by land. That factor had a huge impact on the geography of the places settled then. So you have the aforementioned situation where ports were built at the farthest navigable point up river, or where places separated by land but close by water, like the Eastern Shore and the rest of Virginia are joined together.

One other thing, a big factor in Hartford's development was a large flood in 1692 which changed the course of the Connecticut River and made the Wethersfield Cove unsuitable for shipping. Prior to that, the Cove was the major shipping port in the area.