Looking back at Hartford parks

Labor Day 1921: Dancing in Colt Park. Credit: Hartford History Center.

On Monday, the Hartford History Center of the Hartford Public Library will unveil an online exhibit of vintage photographs celebrating the city’s park system.

The exhibit, called “Hartford Springs Into Summer,” will go live at 7 ..m., via an online presentation on Zoom and Facebook Live. Bookmark the exhibit here: https://hartfordparks.omeka.net/exhibits/show/springintosummer/title

The exhibit features newly available material from the HHC’s Parks Collection, according to a Library news release. HHC Historical Research Specialist Maureen Heher will outline how the photographs were selected, which Archivist Jennifer Sharp will discuss the new material.

The Parks Collection sat in storage at City Hall until a city councilor discovered them in the 1980s. It then went to the Hartford History Center. Recently, Sharp began working with the thousands of images and documents, cataloguing them and creating “finding aids.”

“There is another half of the collection that has pretty much never been touched,” she said.