By the 1940s, it was clear that many buildings in downtown Hartford needed to be updated. Yearly flooding and deferred maintenance left aging buildings on Front and Windsor Streets in poor condition. At the same time, local manufacturing started to lose to national and global competitors. The industrial businesses that did survive moved to suburban campuses with modern amenities. The city's business leaders worried that downtown Hartford wouldn't be attractive enough to keep the growing number of white collar businesses. Planners began to focus on removing housing designated as “slums” and developing modern office complexes in their place.
To help prepare for these redevelopment projects, Hartford’s Commission on the City Plan created the document "Hartford Plans for Tomorrow" in 1955. This was Hartford’s first planning document that looked at the city as a whole, and not just specific elements. The plan addressed the pressing issues of the day: traffic congestion, poor housing conditions, and the need to expand the business district. The two main goals of the plan were to create better living conditions for the community and provide opportunities for business and industry to grow.
The combination of improved technology, accumulated wealth, and government programs allowed for rapid, sweeping changes to Hartford’s landscape during the 1960s and 1970s. Hundreds of families and dozens of businesses were moved out to make way for urban renewal projects like Constitution Plaza and the Hartford Civic Center. Whole blocks of old buildings were removed to make way for newer, more modern office buildings. This left little space in downtown Hartford to build new housing and the population dropped sharply. At the same time, new house construction exploded in the surrounding suburbs as the new highway system made it easier to travel in and out of the city. This further increased traffic congestion and parking problems, and the destruction of movie theaters, restaurants, and shops, meant that there was very little for these commuters to do in the city after work. Downtown emptied out at 5:00, something that the planning commissioners never envisioned.
The legacy of this failed vision endures to this day and is the subject of a new exhibition opening at The Connecticut Historical Society on October 3. “(Re)Building Hartford: A City Captured by Artist Richard Welling” uses drawings by this Hartford artist to illustrate this turbulent period in Hartford’s history. Later in the fall, additional satellite exhibits at other locations in Hartford will further examine how the built environment of the city continues to shape people’s lives.
