Hartford Skyline

BeeLine

BeeLine

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Just spent a couple weeks in western CT and thought you might be interested in some shots of downtown Hartford.
First impressions of the city:
Makes Bostons Financial District look like Time Sq. on the weekend. Brew pub dosen't even open until 4PM on Sunday.
The city is a bunch concret plazas on steroids.
Riverwalk has great potential, but no p e o p l e.
Fanatastic food, but mostly in the burbs and ethnic sections of town.
Sorry, Boston 02124 not a single crane in sight. Development activity is non existent.

Hartford Skyline 2012
City Place 1 Hartfords tallest building with 38 floors.

City Place 1 (38f)
Travelers Tower

Travelers Tower (26f)


1 Financial Plaza (26f)


Goodwin Sq (30f)


One State Str. (24f)

The tallest residentual tower I could find downtown.
Hartford 21 (36f Res)


Fleet Bank Bldg (26f)


100 Pearl Str. (16f)


One Constitution Plaza (20f)


State House Sq. (17f)


Phoenix Bldg. (15f)


Connecticut Science Center

A classic survives among all the new boxes downtown.
Richardson Bldg. Hartford
 
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Hartford has some issues but it has the second best skyline in New England. The Travelers Tower is still the finest pre-1920 building in the entire region with Boston's Custom House coming in a close second in my opinion!
 
BeeLine said:
7433479142_5b8033a0f2_c.jpg
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The tallest residentual tower I could find downtown.
Hartford 21 (36f Res)
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Correction: The tallest residential tower you could find in New England. =P

Hopefully to be overtaken by the Copley Place Tower.
 
That photo of City Place in Hartford reminds me a lot of the Bank of America Tower in San Francisco, though from most angles, the building looks nothing like it.

555californiastreet.jpg



And I also see a lot of the Met Life Tower in the traveler's building (which I do agree is the nicest pre 1920s tower in New England).

Metlife-Tower-new-york-354013_400_600.jpg
 
That Richardsonian Romanesque building disfigured by stupid Residence Inn awnings is murder on my eyes.
 
KentXie said:
Correction: The tallest residential tower you could find in New England. =P

Hopefully to be overtaken by the Copley Place Tower.
Click to expand...

What about the 2 Millennium Place Towers? Those are both slightly taller than this one.
 
I personally don't hold the Travelers Tower above the Custom House. The Custom House has the most incredible proportioning that the Travelers Tower lacks with its width.
 
DZH22 said:
What about the 2 Millennium Place Towers? Those are both slightly taller than this one.
Click to expand...

I think MP are considered mixed-used (due to the hotel element) whereas Hartford 21 is considered purely residential.
 
Hartford looks awesome. Would love to see it up close, and not just pass it on the way to NYC. :rolleyes:

Anyone know the easiest way to get there for a day trip without a car? Looks like Megabus timetables aren't decent enough to allow for more than a couple hours in the city. Trains require an out-of-the-way transfer, on top of the much higher price tag.

Maybe I'm missing something...
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Anyone know the easiest way to get there for a day trip without a car?
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Peter Pan Bus. I've only ever taken it from Springfield, but it's been dependable in my experience. After a quick check of the schedules, it looks pretty frequent to Hartford and back from South Station, and somewhat reasonably priced.

http://peterpanbus.com/
 
BeeLine said:
Agree 100%

Travelers Tower Hartford CT by snagshead67, on Flickr
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Totally agree--the Custom House is incredibly elegant and slender; the proportioning is just about perfect. The Travelers Building, I would call handsome, and it's a fine building and a beautiful punctuation to the Hartford skyline, but it doesn't not top the Custom House in my book.

As to the Hartford skyline, it is impressive and looks great as you're coming into the city. It's easily one of the nicest skylines in New England, and depending upon the angle, I'd say it trumps the bland boxes of the downtown Boston skyline (but not the Back Bay).

All that said, being at the street level in Hartford is a different story altogether. It is one of the saddest cities I've visited, principally because there are so many traces of what a beautiful and thriving city it once was. But the downtown and the neighborhoods immediately around it have been ravaged by urban renewal, highways and an exodus of nearly all the middle-class and wealthy residents in a way that I have not seen in any other New England city. There are still some great museums, parks and sites to see in downtown Hartford, as well as some good restaurants and the like, but it's a shadow of a shadow of its former self. For a skyline in Connecticut, Hartford is the clear winner, but for a thriving downtown New Haven is decades ahead.

All that said (again), I think Hartford could be poised for some sort of renaissance, but it's several years if not decades off still. The CTFastrak BRT, currently under construction and planned to open in 2014, will run entirely in its own right-of-way from downtown New Britain to downtown Hartford, with stops in suburbs and some downtrodden Hartford neighborhoods along the way. This could really open some of those neighborhoods to redevelopment, giving young people who work downtown a chance to live in a more urban neighborhood with easy access to downtown. There's also talk of moving some nearby colleges--UConn's West Hartford campus, and a few others--into downtown Hartford. Having students in the downtown could change things and give it much less of a 9-5 feel.

If, between the BRT line and some colleges moving downtown, some of the parking lots downtown can be filled in with new development, I think Hartford could really bounce back. As it is, it is sad to see suburbs like West Hartford with more thriving downtowns than Hartford, but I hope that begins to change in the coming years.
 
The Custom House and the Traveler's Tower are equally impressive in design and stature. I lean towards the Traveler's Tower as my favorite due to it's historical resume. It is 34 ft taller than the Custom House, was the first 500 ft building constructed outside of NYC, was the 7th tallest in the world in 1919, and was New England's tallest until the Prudential Tower was built in 1964. In addition, I think the Traveler's Tower is visually more appealing because of it's prominence in the Hartford skyline, where the Custom House can sometimes get lost in the sea of Boston skyscapers. Props to Hartford, a city that peaked with a population of around 180,000 in the fifties!
 
There are some new residential projects in the works that will turn existing vacant buildings into apartments... one being the old BoA/Fleet building in the pic above, another being conversion of the old Sonesta hotel, and the third being the conversion of the old and long-vacant buildings in the corner of Pearl and Trumbull diagonally across the street from Cityplace. I'll dig up some more info and share.
 
Love, love the Phoenix Mutual. So elegant and timeless. Unfortunate it and the rest of Constitution Plaza are at such a remove from the street.
The CT state capital is the best in New England with RI a close second.
 
Portlander said:
The Custom House and the Traveler's Tower are equally impressive in design and stature. I lean towards the Traveler's Tower as my favorite due to it's historical resume. It is 34 ft taller than the Custom House, was the first 500 ft building constructed outside of NYC, was the 7th tallest in the world in 1919, and was New England's tallest until the Prudential Tower was built in 1964. In addition, I think the Traveler's Tower is visually more appealing because of it's prominence in the Hartford skyline, where the Custom House can sometimes get lost in the sea of Boston skyscapers. Props to Hartford, a city that peaked with a population of around 180,000 in the fifties!
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To be fair, it's only taller because of it's flag-pole spire. To the roof they are essentially the same (in fact, if you sort the diagram by roof, Custom House is taller).

Here is the comparison.
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=58008986
 
DZH22 said:
To be fair, it's only taller because of it's flag-pole spire. To the roof they are essentially the same (in fact, if you sort the diagram by roof, Custom House is taller).

Here is the comparison.
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=58008986
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comparison link, but why the heck are they not using Mike Verrilli's drawing of the Custom House instead? The one they are using by Chris is not accurate in the slightest. There are way too many windows.
 
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