Historic Photos of Connecticut

Sam L. Rothman

Description

The Nutmeg State, the Constitution State, the Land of Steady Habits. For a state that some derisively claim is "no bigger than a postage stamp,” there is no shortage of nicknames or descriptors for Connecticut. Nor is there any shortage of history!

Historic Photos of Connecticut celebrates eighty years of growth, change, and reform through a collection of snapshots, each providing a unique and different viewpoint. The result is not a narration, but rather a set of impressions captured through the lenses of a hundred different cameras.

From the decades following the Civil War, we view Connecticut’s inventiveness and industrial genius through its mills and factories. In its neighborhoods, colleges, and rural towns we glimpse its religious, cultural, and intellectual wealth. Along rural lanes, railroads, rivers, and highways we catch images of its farmers, workers, and war heroes, of its reformers, industrial statesmen, inventors, and schoolchildren. Through train wrecks, floods, fires, and blizzards, Historic Photos of Connecticut provides a glimpse at the hardscrabble toughness that characterizes the people of Connecticut.

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Collections photographiques
• Histoire
• State
• United States
• New England
• History
• Local
• Connecticut

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781618586179
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 14 Mo

Extrait

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF
CONNECTICUT
T EXT AND C APTIONS BY S AM L. R OTHMAN
Construction on the Connecticut State Capitol began in 1871 and was completed in 1878. The dome of the Victorian Gothic structure is 257 feet tall and covered in gold leaf. The building s $2.5 million price tag brought howls from fiscal conservatives throughout the state, but its ornate Victorian Gothic style pleased the eye of Hartford s social elite. A Civil War-era mortar graces the unpaved driveway on a sunny day in 1907.
HISTORIC PHOTOS OF
CONNECTICUT
Turner Publishing Company
200 4th Avenue North Suite 950
Nashville, Tennessee 37219
[phone]
Historic Photos of Connecticut
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 2008 Turner Publishing Company
All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008901902
ISBN: 978-1-59652-431-6
Printed in China
09 10 11 12 13 14 15-0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
C ONTENTS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
P REFACE
A G ILDED A GE AND A G OLDEN D OME (1878-1916)
C HANGE FOR THE L AND OF S TEADY H ABITS (1917-1938)
L IFE ON THE H OME F RONT (1939-1945)
P EACE , P ROSPERITY, AND THE F UTURE (1946-1960 S )
N OTES ON THE P HOTOGRAPHS
At sunrise on a summer day in 1917, a truckload of mostly young girls leaves from Post Office Square in Hartford for the American Sumatra Tobacco Farm in South Windsor. For decades Hartford youngsters worked seasonally as laborers in the tobacco fields of the Connecticut River Valley.
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume, Historic Photos of Connecticut , is the result of the contributions of many individuals and organizations. It is with great thanks that we acknowledge those organizations from which photographs were obtained. These include the following institutions: the Library of Congress, the Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the Archives of the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, the Special Collections and Connecticut Polish Archives at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, the Center for Connecticut Studies and Special Archives at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, the Bristol Historical Society, and the Stafford Historical Society.
Special thanks to each of the following individuals for the personal attention they provided. Tara Hurt and Deb Simpson at the J. Eugene Smith Library at Eastern Connecticut State University, Ewa Wolynska at the Elihu Burritt Library at Central Connecticut State University, Richard Rich of the Bristol Historical Society, Isabell Zabilansky of the Stafford Historical Society, and the entire staff at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford.
Thank you to the following persons who contributed photographs: Igor Sikorsky, Jr., W. Reed Smith, and Sue Harvey. Also thanks to Becky Bearden for technical and moral support and Dan O Donnell for his timely advice and suggestions.
P REFACE
The history of Connecticut has been captured in thousands of photographs that reside in archives, libraries, historical societies, and private collections. This book began with the observation that, while these photographs are of great interest and value, most are not easily accessible to the students and young people who could learn from them or to the rest of us who might appreciate them.
For many years I worked with students on Connecticut History Day, a statewide academic competition for middle school and high school students. Part of National History Day and sponsored by the Connecticut Historical Society, this program involves thousands of students statewide each year. Contrary to popular belief, today s youth can be inspired to put aside their videogames and cell phones and to explore their heritage. To offer inspiration, teachers must shelve the overstuffed textbooks, lectures, worksheets, and standardized tests that turn so many students off and offer students the opportunity to become historians themselves, exploring the subject through exposure to original source materials.
Children are curious by nature and historic photographs are among the tools able to arouse that natural curiosity. It is one thing to read in a textbook about a Great Depression or a Gilded Age. It is something else to stare into the eyes of a ten-year-old street vendor hawking newspapers in 1910 and ask, Why isn t he in school?
History comes alive when a student peers into a photograph and proclaims, I know that place. I ve seen that building. My grandfather told me about that flood. Old photos raise personal questions, which kindle the desire to learn. How did that train get into the river? Why are they dressed that way? Did they have to work like that every day? That happened right here, on this street-could it happen again?
It is hoped that the photographs and captions in these pages will spark interest in the rich history of the Constitution State. Unlike text or a video, still photos offer an untainted perspective from which to draw conclusions, interpretations, and insights. In a photograph one views a moment captured in time. A facial expression, a falling tower, a raging flood, a line of marchers, or a powerful steam engine-each is frozen mid-motion for us to study, ponder, and enjoy. May the images presented here inspire readers young and old to look further into the history which is all around them.
This project represents countless hours of research. The editors and I have reviewed thousands of photographs in numerous archives and collections. We greatly appreciate the generous assistance of the organizations and individuals listed in the acknowledgments, without whom this project could not have been completed.
With the exception of the need to crop some images to fit the available space and the touching up of minor imperfections, no other changes have been made. The caliber and clarity of many photographs are limited by the technology of the day and the ability of the photographer at the time.
This book was not planned as an all-inclusive history of the state. It is a series of family snapshots. As in any family album, some members were absent when photos were taken and others probably wished not to be included when the photographer was present. Subject matter was restricted to available images. The time period was selected both for the wealth and quality of materials available and the perspective which time permits a historian to gain.
The book is divided into four eras beginning in 1878, the year Connecticut s state capitol opened in Hartford. The introductory chapter moves from the later nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The second chapter spans the period from World War I through the Great Depression. Chapter 3 covers Connecticut on the home front during World War II, and chapter 4 continues the story from the postwar years into the 1950s and 1960s.
In each of these sections we have made an effort to include photographs that capture various aspects of life. People, commerce, industry, recreation, transportation, infrastructure, and religious and educational institutions have been included to provide a broad perspective. Natural and man-made disasters are shown, as well as images of personal joy and individual triumph. It is our hope that in browsing through this collection, longtime residents will be reminded of long forgotten memories and also gain some new insights. For young people and newcomers to our state, we hope that the compendium will inspire you to learn more and to visit the landmarks pictured on these pages.
- Sam L. Rothman
In 2003, the University of Connecticut s Lady Huskies won the NCAA Basketball Championship with a stirring victory over archrival Tennessee. One can only speculate how UConn might have fared a century earlier against this 1903 team from the Willimantic State Normal School. WSNS, now Eastern Connecticut State University, is located just down the road from Storrs in Willimantic.
A G ILDED A GE AND A G OLDEN D OME
(1878-1916)
Despite its small area (5,544 square miles) Connecticut has long been a land of diversity and contrast. In 1636, Thomas Hooker led a group of pious Massachusetts Bay Puritans west, founding Hartford along a wide river that the Mohicans called the Quinnehtukqut.
Two years later John Davenport founded New Haven in a coastal harbor where the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block had landed 24 years earlier. Over the following two centuries, Connecticut s capital would periodically alternate as both Hartford and New Haven competed for the position of Connecticut s leading city. Growth in the state s economy and social life reflected additional political, social, and economic divisions. Hardworking Yankee farmers, immigrant mill workers, and small-town artisans all came to call Connecticut home. Wealthy merchants, inventors, investors, and Gold Coast millionaires would call it home as well.
This chapter in Connecticut history begins in 1878, the year Connecticut settled the New Haven-Hartford competition placing its state government beneath a gold-covered dome in Hartford. Legislators spent the then staggering sum of $2.5 million to build a permanent state capitol. The golden dome has come to symbolize a state in which one finds rich and poor, urban and rural, immigrant and patrician.
It was Hartford resident Mark Twain who coined the phrase the Gilded Age. The image contrasts the opulence and excess of Victorian Era capitalists with the struggle of mill workers, farmers, and immigrants to eke out a living. Photographs of Connecticut s cities and towns, farms and factories, and even her occasional train wrecks illustrate the work and lives of both groups of citizens during this age.
The period surveyed here was also a time of reform and change. As the new century got under way,