Some Basic Asylum Hill History Asylum Hill (initially called Lords Hill), a neighborhood west of Hartford, was once farmland named after Captain Richard Lord, a prominent early settler of Hartford. In 1817 the Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons was founded and its first student, Alice Cogswell, was enrolled. The…
Updated February 2019 On a recent unseasonably warm, sunny winter day I spent an afternoon in Hartford visiting the Wadsworth Atheneum and strolling through the surrounding neighborhood. Right next to the Atheneum is the Hartford Municipal Building which I hadn’t paid close attention to before. Nine random facts, in no particular order: When it opened…
On a recent Hartford walk, I came upon a charming little building at the edge of Bushnell Park. Slate roof, bright red gable, Tudor style. As it came into sharper view I noticed the sign, Pump House Gallery, above the structure’s heavy wooden door. As I looked further, I could see the industrial looking machinery…
A fixture on Woodland Street in Hartford, the Town & County Club has been welcoming its women members and their guests for decades, celebrating 90 years in 2015. With a striking exterior of buff color brick and limestone, the huge Colonial Revival house that the Club calls home was once the residence of Theodore and…
How many times have you looked up something on the Internet, only to find yourself falling down the rabbit hole, moving from one subject to the next? Take a peek at where my research of these doors took me… All I knew was that the addresses were 23-25 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, and from the blue…
A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell – Harriet Beecher Stowe This is the Charles Boardman Smith house, c. 1875, which stands proudly in spite of its downtrodden…
