A series of entries designed to capture the ongoing adventures of NINA! See how we came to be where we are today, and follow along as we enter the new century of social media!
Page: 13The new(ish) homeowners at 88 Hawthorn Street graciously agreed to help us out by posing for a key conveyance ceremony. This is only the third time we've done one of these, the others being at 33 Sargeant and 207 Garden (and strangely, it doesn't look like I posted a photo of the actual key conveyance at that ceremony!).
Front walks and back walks poured, and work inside the front doors, as we get ready for the doors and the stained glass transoms.
Now that we’re getting near the end of this project, we’ve been able to repair the sidewalk around 80 Hawthorn. I won’t lie, we did make the sidewalk a little worse, especially along South Marshall Street, with our construction equipment, but the sidewalk was a mess long before we got onto the scene. We’re awfully glad to have reached this point, both because we’ve been eager to repair the sidewalk and because this signals we’ll soon have these houses on the market.
Also, the hardwood floors are being installed. This is just a good day for walking at 80 Hawthorn!
The rotary at Park Terrace, Sigourney, and Russ really would have had only a minor effect on those of you who commute to Asylum Hill, but this new project will impact lots of you. ConnDOT has begun work on the Sigourney Street bridge that goes over the train tracks and over (and under) Interstate 84. From the looks of it, the project will take a long time: note that the new traffic patterns around the construction have been painted into place.
The details. You can still get off 84 onto Sigourney Street, but the offramp is now one lane at the end. You can go both north and south, but again, only one lane until you’re fully off the bridge. The light at Hawthorn now rates between north and south – as in, northbound goes while everyone else has a red, and then southbound goes. This is to prevent someone wanting to turn left from Sigourney northbound blocking everyone behind them. As for southbound, you can still get onto 84 going east, but you can only get there from the southbound lanes. Northbound Sigourney is closed entirely between Park Terrace and the highway offramp.
What does this have to do with that new rotary? They deliberately held off on the bridge project until the rotary officially opened.
The Cathedral of Saint Joseph has wrapped up their project on their west lawn, and they’ve created a lovely garden area that celebrates their history and their patrons while also providing a spot for contemplation. The even managed to preserve the old weeping cross (sort of).
For the first time in 18 months, we welcomed volunteers to one of our project sites. We had a the defense from the Trinity College men’s hockey team up at 29 Ashley Street, doing some work on the lawn and pulling nails from the interior framing. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was fun to have people back on site.
This was a great group, too. They were very enthusiastic about working, and some of them had even volunteered for us over on Sigourney Street when they were freshmen. Many thanks to them and to our friend at Trinity, Joe Barber, for helping to set this up with us.
Thanks also to the “ServCorps Gang” – Dave Cunningham, Rich Grobe, Ramon Martinez, Tony Mein, and Mike Stockman – who came out to oversee the day and to provide snacks, too.
The exterior framing on the bay windows is now in place.
This is coming up Garden to the intersection with Cogswell and Myrtle. They’ve taken out the left lane at the intersection, which used to be a “rump” lane for turning left, which means they’ve eliminated the right-turn-only lane.
It does make things easier for people who want to turn left, but it certainly hasn’t discouraged anyone from racing up the left-turn lane to pass everyone at the intersection.
This is coming up Garden to the intersection with Cogswell and Myrtle. They’ve taken out the left lane at the intersection, which used to be a “rump” lane for turning left, which means they’ve eliminated the right-turn-only lane.
It does make things easier for people who want to turn left, but it certainly hasn’t discouraged anyone from racing up the left-turn lane to pass everyone at the intersection.
