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: 14From the ceremony's program: the monument had begun to crumble by the time the American School for the Deaf sold its Hartford campus to the Hartford Fire Insurance Company (i.e., The Hartford), and so the school decided to dismantle and store the monument in a barn in West Hartford. The monument was moved to storage on the school's West Hartford campus in 1954. In 2016, the school hired Francis Miller to assess the current state of the monument. In 2019, a school alumna provided a major donation to the school, and that contribution funded the renovation and restoration of the monument.
Miller preserved the original marble elements that remained intact and then replaced the missing elements with granite that matched to original monument. Steven Petersen, a deaf artist in Minnesota, used a cast provided by Miller to create a new bronze relief based on the orginal design -- this is the cast of Gallaudet spelled in the manual alphabet.
This ceremony marked a very special occasion for the school. The project to restore the memorial and return it to public display began three years ago, and today represented the culmination of that effort. Speaking today were Jeffrey Bravin, executive director of the school; Susan Bysiewicz, the lieutenant governor; Adrienne Billings-Smith, West Hartford Town Council; Usman, a student at the school; Barbara Cassin, vice president of the school's board of directors; Sandra McLennon, president of the school's alumni association; and Francis Miller, a conservator who restored the memorial.
Today, the American School for the Deaf held a ceremony to unveil the Gallaudet Memorial on their campus on West Hartford. Jean Linderman, who serves as the school's historian, invited me to attend -- she and I have been working together on the school's history on the Hill-- and today's ceremony was a very special event. The memorial, which had previously stood in front of the school's main building in Hartford, hasn't been seen in public since the school moved to West Hartford in 1921, so when the pulled the cover off of the memorial it was the first time it had been publicly displayed in over a century! Some more details will follow in subsequent posts, but it really was a thrill to be there today.
Interior framing has begun inside the house, while work on the siding continues outside. The back staircase, which had been a separate egress for an upstairs rental unit, has been removed. The third floor remains daunting. A very good sign is the arrival of the "ServCorps chairs," which means we are now well underway.
The new owners are advertising space available for lease in Veeder Place. If you’re looking for office space in a great neighborhood, look no farther! Veeder Place is a historic building – it was Curtis Veeder’s factory at one point, and he parlayed the money he made here into his home, which is now the headquarters to the Connecticut Historical Society – and you’d have some great neighbors. And I don’t mean us! We’re nice, sure, but we are very lucky to have a great community of non-profit agencies here with us.
The aluminum siding has started to come down, and now there’s a view of the wood clapboard beneath. Likely this is from the 1970s renovation of the house – gold was a popular color then, along with avocado, and I think I’m glad they picked gold (okay, mustard) over avocado.
The site is much cleaner now, which means we can now start the restoration work.
Huzzah! I finished up my street walking tonight with Asylum Avenue. I just beat Daylight Savings Time, too. Along the way, I also finished up Garden Street – you know, the part I don’t walk along to get home.
On my way out, I caught a marvelous view of the sunset down Sargeant Street. I also got some nice shots of the pedestrian tunnel under the railroad bridge on Asylum Street, the front portico of The Hartford, and the Alice Cogswell Statute, which it turns out has floodlights! In all my years in Hartford, I can’t ever remember seeing Alice lit up. There are also two photos of Aetna’s support for Ukraine: the light in its cupola alternates between blue and yellow.
Next step: I’ll collate these photographs and then start work on getting the lights turned back on. After that, we’ll continue geocoding streetlights and then look into mapping crime data against streetlights.
Based on my experience on Sigourney Street, I walked up to Farmington and Broad a little before 6 PM, and then waited. Sure enough, the lights popped on at 6, so that’s the time they’re supposed to go on, at least this time of year. Farther down the street, some of the decorative streetlights were out. One more thing to add to our analysis.
Note in the background The Hartford showing its support for Ukraine. Also, a couple of neat shots of 210 Farmington and the Cathedral.
The Stowe Center’s two houses looked nice in the twilight. Otherwise, the big story tonight was being followed briefly on my walk by someone who’d just bought a pizza at the Domino’s on Farmington Avenue and was walking to their parked car on Forest Street. It reminded me that I’ve been taking these walks at dinnertime!
One light out, down under the highway overpasses, and its absence made a huge difference.
