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: 40
Tonight we were part of a tour for Christopher Swift, CEO of The Hartford, and Mary Swift, his wife. They were joined on their tour by Kathleen Bromage, Chief Markeing and Communications Officer for The Hartford. This tour was arranged by Diane Cantello, Vice President, Corporate Sustainability at The Hartford, and it was organized by Morgan Ferrarotti, Director of Strategic Community Investments at The Hartford. We worked with them to connect the Swifts with Katie Kokias, one of the residential tenants at 207 Garden Street, and she very graciously took us through her apartment. We also worked with Steve Borla and Naveed Sobhan of the Hartford Community Loan Fund to host the Swifts for dinner. Together, we were able to give the Swifts a real inside look at 207 Garden Street and everything that had gone into its rehabilitation.
The Swifts’ visit 207 Garden was the last stop on the tour that Diane and Morgan put together, and we all enjoyed the chance to sit, enjoy dinner from Kent Pizza just downstairs, and to talk about our work as well as the broader effort to revitalize Hartford and Asylum Hill. The Hartford has been a tremendous partner with us since we were founded – in fact, they founded us! – and we appreciate how strongly The Hartord continues to invest in NINA as we near 15 years of working together in Asylum Hill.
Naturally we celebrated the moment with a joint photograph! Pictured from left to right are Kathleen Bromage, Morgan Ferrarotti, David Corrigan, Christopher Swift, Mary Swift, Diane Cantello, Naveed Sohan, and Steve Borla. We’re in HCLF’s conference room, which overlooks Garden Street.
We had another group of Trinity students out today to help with the owrk at 94 Ashley Street. Here they are after all the hard work -- they seemed to have had a good time!
In a stop over at 207 Garden Street today, we learned that the Hartford Community Loan Fund has changed the name of the building! The building, which we had named in honor of George Zunner, its architect, is now the Jacobson Building, in honor of Elinor P. Jacobson, more widely known as Elly Jacobson.
According to HCLF, Jacobson was president of their board of directors when she began to push the organization to find a new, more central location for its cramped offices in the South End, which had been HCLF’s primary focus prior to expanding its services citywide. Jacobson, who passed away in 2009, held a variety of positions around Hartford, including Director of Community Services at Trinity College, and she was also active in Hartford politics and on other non-profit boards, in particular the Hartford Artists Collective.
HCLF has installed this portrait of Jacobson in their lobby.
Our latest new construction now belongs to new homeowners! A young couple will now move into the house, and we are very pleased to welcome them to their new home and to the neighborhood.
A group of students participating in Trinity College's January Experience of Living, Learning, and Outreach (JELLO) volunteered today at 115 and 117 Sigourney Street. Work included cleaning up the site, inside and out, and making the whole place look presentable.
We were very saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Stu Beckett today. Stu was a dedicated member of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, and in that capacity he was instrumental in the foundation of ServCorps, the building ministry that worked to re-build homes in disaster-stricken areas around the country. ServCorps, of course, was a long-time partner with NINA, and although we met Stu through ServCorps we quickly came to know him in his own right. Stu lent his carpentry skills to our projects, and his involvement can be seen on many of the porches of our homes. We still have a batch of trim that he ordered for us in our storage area, and we will think fondly of him as we install it at 94-96 Ashley Street.
Ah, the joys of the season are not complete without this event!
This is historic rehabilitation in action!
And the walls come down -- well, some of them, anyway.
It's never fun to take down a mature tree, especially one as old and grand as the tree in front of 94-96 Ashley Street, but in this case we had no choice. We'd been advised that the tree was unhealthy, possibly dying, but as it turned out it had actually become a danger. When we started to remove it, we discovered that the tree was entirely hollow: the whole of the interior of the tree had rotted away, and it was only a matter of time before it came down. We're guessing the tree was planted in front of the house after it was built, which would have put it at close to 120 years old. We'll never know for sure, though, since the majority of the tree rings were gone.
