`Despite only growing up about a 30-minute drive away from Hartford, I only really experienced the city itself from afar. When I remember my experiences in Hartford I remember only the view of the city from driving on I-91 or I-84. I also tend to find myself only remembering my walk from the paid parking lot to the imposing concrete XL center for a hockey game or waiting on the side of the road to be picked up by my ourbus to Ithaca. In a sense, Hartford, Connecticut hasn’t seemed like a place to me; rather the city has felt merely like a place to travel through. Downtown Hartford doesn’t feel like a place where I could linger, go for a walk, and watch the world go by. Instead, when I am in Downtown Hartford I feel estranged from the city, as I watch it pass by at 60 miles an hour through a car window, or try to walk through the car-centric streets, or feel engulfed by the imposing, modernist skyscrapers. I yearned for a Hartford that would give me a unique urban place and experience; however, I didn’t realize Hartford used to be that place. However, for many previous residents, Downtown Hartford was a Famous American author and Hartford resident in the late 1800s, Mark Twain, famously said that “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, Hartford is the chief... You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here”, a farcry from Hartford’s reputation today. Nowadays people look at Hartford and only talk about crime, traffic, and endless urban sprawl. I look at Downtown Hartford today and I mostly see concrete, surface parking, and highway on ramps.What Changed? How did Hartford fall from Mark Twain’s favorite city to a mere passing image that I see through the window of moving car?
Now that I am older and wiser I have come to find that Hartford used to in fact be a gem of New England in the 1800s, with historic architecture, lively streets, beautiful parks, and walkability. However, the urban theory of the mid 19th century came in a destroyed this once beautiful gem of the New England. I-91 was erected and now dominates the bank of the Connecticut River, leaving little room for public green space by the water for residents to enjoy. At the same time, I-84 cut through downtown and gutted out blocks of the shops, theathers, and apartments that made up the rich history of Hartford. Downtown Hartford because less of a hub of culture and more of a business park meant for accommodating insurance companies and their employees. The streets were widened, blocks were raised surface parking, glass and concrete modernist skyscrapers slowly replaced the charming architecture of the 1800s. This is when the city became what it is today, a machine that funnels in corporate insurance workers at 9am and spits them out in the sprawling suburbs at 5pm.
This vision of the city marks a non-existent place that people merely drive past, the Hartford that I grew up with. The destruction of Hartford deprived me of a worldly, urban experience that could have existed in my backyard. I could have taken in blocks of timeless architecture, explored rich nightlife, and been surrounded unique small businesses but these were all lost to surface parking, the interstate highways, and suburban sprawl. In this situation it seems as if all I can do lament what it lost; however, I can also look to the slivers of Hartford’s past that still remain today. Even though I have grown up largely interacting with Hartford from the window of a car I can still appreciate the bits of the past that I drive by or can still visit. The Connecticut Capitol building with it’s golden roof, Buschell park for its free ice skating during the holidays, and Pratt Street a preserved slice of the Hartford that once was. I look to this relics of the past and hope that one day they won’t relics, but once again part of a bustling, walkable downtown that invites real people in to enjoy its culture and entertainment.
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