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Wednesday, October 19, 2005
So Long, YMCA Building--Again
The Hartford YMCA building at the corner of Jewell and Pearl Streets, overlooking Bushnell Park, will be torn down and replaced by what the Hartford Courant describes as "the largest downtown residential development in years," containing 200 upscale condominiums and 100 apartments. The Y plans to move its health facilities and headquarters to the Hartford 21 building at the Civic Center--another Northland development. Its remaining programs and services will move to new facilities in the city's north and south ends.
There will be no relocation, however, for the 145 residential rooms at the downtown Y. Early in its history, when Hartford was a factory city, the Y provided temporary housing to young men who came to town in search of manufacturing jobs. But times have changed. As Tom Reynolds, the Y's vice president for development services, told the Courant: "We now work primarily with children and families."
This won't be the first time a downtown YMCA has been razed. To make way for the current building, the Y's original headquarters--an imposing Victorian-style building--was razed in early 1970s, despite intense opposition from residents. That episode is often referred to as the genesis of the preservation movement in Hartford.
# Posted by Kevin Flood at 11:12 AM
Friday, October 14, 2005
The other Harriet Beecher Stowe House
Before she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, before she moved to Farmington Avenue, Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her house there still stands, and according to a recent Chicago Sun-Times article, several groups are looking at its potential as a tourist attraction. The Sun-Times reports that Stowe, then in her early 20s, moved to Cincinnati in the early 1830s because her father, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, had became president of a local theological seminary. "While in Cincinnati, she encountered runaway slaves escaping to freedom and viewed a slave auction in neighboring Kentucky," the newspaper reports.
# Posted by Kevin Flood at 8:26 PM
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