Hartford, CT's Lost Riverfront

[@CTeale1]

This presentation is exactly why I refuse to call myself a Hartford Historian. At best I am a history buff by comparison. Magnificent job!

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thank you!

[@betteparris2984]

I remember Front street was mostly Italian shops and restaurants. I think I had my first bowl of minnestroni (?) there. I loved Hartford and we came from Mansfield and Manchester. I thank you for the memories.

[@jamesmicucci7028]

I miss the old Italian section of Franklin Ave. I mean, like, prior to the 1990s. As a kid, I remember going to the Italian Festival & parade, the Italian bakeries & such. Great old memories, before the crack epidemic (beginning around 1988/89) and all the other illegal hard drug & guns trade that brought more violence to the area. I was last there around 2001, there was a feeling of menace in the air there, and I just knew I'd never go back there.

[@bigdaddysantos]

Great Video of a section of the city lost to Urban renewal. I had family that lived on Front Street on the East Side (Big Mike's bicycle shop) and upended by the renewal effort. Interestingly enough, I now live in Newburyport Massachusetts which in the 60s and 70s fought a similar renewal effort and used the money to preserve the old buildings. Newburyport was also home to the Wheelwright Family - Edmund March Wheelwright (buried here) was an architect on the Bulkeley bridge (as well as the Longfellow "salt shaker" bridge in Boston). Great job!

[@ecurewitz]

So much was destroyed and replaced with nothing

[@SCCL1000]

Good for you. Newburyport is one of the truly charming waterfront communities.

[@edwardroberts2997]

Hi Dan, I can remember the times when my Grandmother would take me. Shopping along the front street, all of the stores can still smell the cheeses and meats hanging on hooks in the windows I was twelve years old at that time Grandma would stop and get fresh bread and pasta, which we had for supper that same day boy those were the great times hanging by the river now I am 81 years old male in a wheelchair what I would go BACK to those days life was GREAT thank you so much for those videos,

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thank you so much for sharing those memories! The smells of the food must have been great!

[@richjakowski1056]

A very scholarly discussion of Hartford history as are all your preceding videos. My dad was born in 1910 and grew up in this area of Hartford. His family lived in an 8 family apartment house on Portland St. This entire street and all the buildings on it was completely demolished in redevelopment of the 1950-60s. I was born in 1939 and lived further north on Elmer St. I'd love to see a discussion of the movie theaters of Hartford. There were eight I attended regularly in the early 50s, 10 all together if you counted the Crown and State, though the State only hosted band performances during that era as I recall.

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks for watching! I'd like to do a video about movie theaters (I have a lot of material about them), but I'd have to secure the rights to all the photos I'd need to use.

[@chizzy756]

Good vid my friend keep up the great work as a Hartford native I enjoy learning about the city before my time 💯❤️🤘🏾

[@MrJerramie]

Thank you so much! As a life long resident of East Hartford, I spent so much time in downtown exploring and then I my twenties partaking in the nightlife. I have always loved downtown Hartford. This video was so entertaining to me. 😊

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks!

[@centralctbench6843]

So glad I found this channel. Love local history like this

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks for watching!

[@annastani7736]

Another great video Dan. I appreciate the work you put into this.

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thank you!

[@treyhazard7318]

Wow, how funny that this was just posted yesterday right before the infrastructure bill passed! The state has been planning to reconstruct the interchanges and relocate the highways, potentially putting much of it underground (like our version of Boston’s “Big Dig”)! Now that we are receiving billions in federal funding I am hopeful this works out and Hartford is finally reconnected with the riverside :)

[@ryanuncensored]

I’m hopeful to be tall someday.

[@markrichards6863]

Because Hartford (A.K. A. FartHard, has no original ideas, nor does it have a clue on how to turn things around.

[@Miketar2424]

@@markrichards6863 To be fair, no poor city in America has the ability to turn things around. Hartford is the 4th poorest city in the country because, like myself, people commute there to work for the corporate jobs, and then leave to their suburban homes, taking their wealth with them. No business investment is made for Hartford by Hartford citizens who live inside the city, and even if these corporations build there, they use people from their own contractors who may live in other states. It is the Amazonization of the country and the cities that will keep this city poor and a side note to the larger richer cities.

[@daveweiss5647]

You realize that infrastructure bill was just money laundering and wont really accomplish much besides rising inflation and enriching donors and politicians right? Stop falling for political tricks.

[@johnnytoronto1066]

Very well done. Thank you! I witnessed the "urban renewal" of Detroit. As in Hartford, it was a total crime.

[@NutmegNewsGuy]

Quality stuff!

[@TheJojo01902]

Totally fascinating. Once again, I commend you for the use of the ‘morphing red rectangle’ to zoom in on that part of the view being discussed!

[@TheCowardStrikesBack]

Great explantion of everything. Well done.

[@bill8985]

I only had a brief interlude of my life in Hartford. Back then I could feel the bones and the ghosts of a once great city. While so sad to watch this, I am truly impressed at the detail of your presentation.

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks!

[@ELLIS1737]

Thank you. A lot of work was involved in putting this together. This is the first of your videos I've seen. Looking forward to seeing others.

[@theblackmanarmedwithacamera]

WOOOOWWWW! IT'S AMAZING TO SEE PLACES OF YESTERDAY'S PAST!! LOVE THE VIDEO. LOADS OF INFO. SUBBED!!!

[@ABMP4D3]

Great documentary, the bridge across the CT River that burned in 1895, cost the life of several horses, and the Hose wagon for Engine Company 3 of the City of Hartford Fire Dept. The horses, and hose wagon went down when the bridge collapsed, and were never removed from the river. They were closer to the East Hartford side of the bridge.

[@AidenSexsmith]

Knew about the fire, didn't know a hose wagon went down. When they made the bridge, a few islands disappeared from the River.

[@ABMP4D3]

@@AidenSexsmith Company #3 was on Market St., The station was torn down in 1958 when Constitution Plaza and 91 were built.

[@slimtimm1]

Great work my friend

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks! Please check out my other videos too. I have a lot more about Hartford's old East Side!

[@slimtimm1]

Been watching them ALL

[@paulworthen9972]

Great video! What happened to all the shipping business hat was coming in to the waterfront? Did they dock elsewhere?

[@historywithdansterner263]

I think it was switching over to rail freight. The same with passenger transport.

[@jackd8602]

Great presentation!! Thanks again Dan.

[@MrCapeman1]

I remember constitution plaza in winter with the lights. The brown Thompson . The Russian lady. The whales. Jai lai. Great City. The Italian pastry place on New Britain Ave I think.... have not been back since 1995

[@charlesburns3946]

This is great stuff. Perhaps one day you might document the old East Side's large leaf tobacco industry and cigar manufacturing history. In the early 20th-late 19th Century, Hartford was the second largest leaf tobacco exporter in America, surpassed in tonnage of exports only by Richmond, VA. Much of the leaf was shipped to cigar factories to New York by boat and to Tampa by rail. Especially dense was the area from State Street south to the Park River, east and west of Front Street. I could provide names of many companies. I have PDF copies of the Hartford Tobacco Journal, a weekly trade paper, from the 1910s. Every wave of new immigrants contained thousands of new workers getting their start in Hartford's cigar leaf industry. Though politically incorrect now, the Hartford tobacco industry long paid more in taxes to the city than the relatively "recent" insurance business. All trace of Hartford's tobacco industry is gone now yet many old warehouses are repurposed and still exist, notably on Windsor St, Woodland St, and other places near East Hartford center. A comprehensive book on the subject needs to be written but I am getting too old. Much company records are held at UCONN. I hope that by identifying the buildings of the old East Side that were tobacco buildings, some of this little known rich history can be preserved. If making such a video interests you i could at least send you the PDF files. You have a valuable, serious and dignified channel here, so if you like, contact me on Signal or Telegram or simply [e-mail]

[@historywithdansterner263]

Did you watch my video about State Street? I focus on the block between Market and Front. My next video will be about State Street east of Front Street to the Connecticut River. Thanks for watching!

[@AidenSexsmith]

​@@historywithdansterner263 I'd love to see the history of The great meadow in East Hartford, before the highways. Dad said that Italians used to be living there, too. Brainard Airport area with the Regional Market is another, I'm interested in.

[@goodun2974]

My mother worked in the processing barn of one of the shade tobacco farms when she was young. She said that the men working in the fields used to wrap frogs and snakes and creepy crawlies inside the bundles of tobacco leaves as a practical joke before carrying them into the barns, so that when the girls unwrapped the tobacco bundles they would shriek and holler. Migrant workers from the South frequently worked those tobacco fields, including a very young Martin Luther King who wrote about it in his diary as being a seminal watershed moment for him, experiencing life in a State where although prejudice could of course be found it was more subtle, less overt, and unlikely to end in severe beatings or death.

[@garagekeys]

Awesome video! thank you

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks!

[@KingBreeze07]

Ah man 👍🏾 great video. Hartford native I had no idea about an East side neighborhood. Wow do you have more videos on this neighborhood?

[@historywithdansterner263]

I have more of them in this playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLsggUe_EuYz0VGDrwTdApP6-nq05xpAkY

[@dougchobey9335]

Very interesting! Never lived there, but you can picture it.

[@onazram1]

Well done Dan..

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks!

[@JarrettDorough]

Hi Dan, not sure if it's covered in your library as I just discovered you but do you know what building used to be on the river at the ferry crossing in Rocky Hill? Where the large silos are?

[@historywithdansterner263]

I don't know the history of that building. Is it one that was demolished recently?

[@JarrettDorough]

@@historywithdansterner263 I'm not sure when it was taken down. I used to live here over 10 years ago but don't remember it there back then.

[@magnesium_subsoil_94]

Hartford is without question the most pathetically designed, comically bad city I’ve ever had the misfortune of living in. It is literally a textbook list of everything not to do in urban planning. Whoever was responsible for those mid 20th century changes should honestly be tried for crimes against humanity

[@solmorales7449]

I am fascinated by the whole history of Hartford and how the first Irish Italians lived in this city.

[@NellaaaaJj]

Hartford has so many hidden facts

[@historywithdansterner263]

Thanks for watching!

[@tonystrychard2529]

and sady...the Constitution Plaza walkway and WFSB is no longer there...

[@junkandthangs]

Thanks Dan

[@glennwetherbee4495]

Good video

[@mikegruber172]

interesting, until about 1991? there was a random deli on the corner of Columbus and what is now Bob Steele road. I wonder if that was from long. It was torn down early 90s.

[@wgb01001]

Yikes, what a disaster

[@johnlazlo1908]

I have a origonial print of the Colt Firearms. Very old has horse n carrige on the print found in my grandfathers basement.

[@LMyrski]

Really sad. Such arrogance. So much lost.

[@daveweiss5647]

America was destroyed in the 60s and 70s... what a tragedy...

[@MainMan7012]

The old east side was a slum. It was flooded many times especially in the 1930s. White flight along with bad ideas went along way to ruin the better parts of the city. It’s not the worst city in America. It has plenty of competition as most small and midsize cities are horrible.

[@neilrusling-je6zo]

When you refer to, "Shops on the first floor", do you mean the first floor or the ground floor? The first floor would be upstairs and above the ground floor which would be unusual for shops. Also did not expect to find a Harness maker still in operation when firearms had all but replaced most older weaponry, he clearly made quality.

[@historywithdansterner263]

Using "first floor" instead of "ground floor" is typical of American usage. Now I usually try to say ground floor to avoid confusion, but I guess I didn't do that in this earlier video. Horses were still used regularly to pull carriages and buggies at the time so harnesses would still have been in demand.

[@seamusmckeon9109]

Now home to Constipation Plaza!

[@Alejandro-es3nj]

Tartarian

[@josephconsuegra6420]

It’s pronounced “Buck” “Lee” Bridge.

[@centralctbench6843]

I’ve always called it Bulkley

[@josephconsuegra6420]

@@centralctbench6843 I grew up in CT in the ‘60’s. It was pronounced “”Buck” “Lee”. Maybe the influx of Puerto Ricans changed the pronunciation. Anyway Hartford has been the armpit of CT for a while. Left in early 80’s because it became a POS.

[@EddieEd-sw1po]

I work right thre by the river, and have viewes of highway and river every day .its enraging what htey did...so ugly. Your 4:05 clip, imagine if that was still hartford today, no highways and shops and apartments righ ton the river..hearing the highway all day and ruining the river experience is f*** BS.

[@jaykoolis961]

First of all Hartford was cutoff from the Connecticut River by flood control dikes long before highways were built. Second the East Side and Front Street was a slum. The homes there contained cold water flats with inadequate sanitary facilities. We need to stop romanticizing it.

[@frog-spit-182]

I'd take a slum over the suburban wasteland the Hartford metro is today. Parking lots and fat people in SUVs.

[@louispeddiltton47]

move the city of hartford. thats the only way to make it look nice again. its been done before... dont be so lazy.

[@JOZONER]

EVERYTHING IS CORNY IN HTFD😂😂😂😂

[@scotts9760]

Interesting history, but eh Hartford is a dying city. Don’t throw good money after bad.