Hartford Seminary

The Hartford Seminary building with snow in the foreground is interesting as a study in different shades of white.

I showed it before, last July.  Today Hartford is experiencing rain and the forecast is for high temperatures Tuesday and Wednesday before a cold front returns on Thursday.  The snowpack should start melting, so flooding will be a concern.  Hartford has had 84 inches of snow so far, making it one of the five snowiest winters of all time.  And March is still to come . . .

Ice Tree

This little tree looked good with a light ice coating.  This is from the archives.

West Hartford Town Hall

West Hartford Town Hall is down the street from First Church and the town library.  (I skipped over some restaurants and stores, but I will get to them eventually.) 

This red sculpture in front of West Hartford Town Hall is an untitled work by Charles O. Perry, placed on the grounds in 2008.  In doing research to learn who made this piece, I learned that Mr. Perry died just two weeks ago at the age of 81.

Yesterday it rained and sleeted, after more snow a few days ago.  There is still plenty of snow on the ground, although it is getting dirty.  This is from the archives, when the snow was cleaner and prettier.

Noah Webster Library

A library and a church stand side-by-side in West Hartford Center.  The library is named for Noah Webster, a native of West Hartford, who wrote a dictionary that -- through multiple editions -- is still in use today as the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  The banner photo on this blog gives a peek at Mr. Webster, the library and the church.  I showed you Mr. Webster standing in front of the library last August.  You can expect to see them again.

First Church

You saw First Church of Christ Congregational reflected in a bank window earlier this month.  I think it deserves its own post.

The church is in the middle and left of this photograph; the West Hartford town library is the brick building to its right.  From the 1940s through the 1980s, this was one of the most successful Protestant churches in New England, with a huge congregation.  In the last two decades, rifts developed within the congregation and some of the senior ministers turned over in just a couple of years, so the congregation today is a bit smaller.  It is working to regenerate itself.

Senate Chambers

This is another perspective of George Washington and the Senate chambers in Hartford's Old State House.

George Washington

Happy birthday to George Washington, who was born on February 22, 1732.

This is one of many portraits of Washington by Gilbert Stuart.  It hangs in Hartford's Old State House, in the former chambers of the Connecticut Senate.

Bicycles Made in Hartford

Hartford was instrumental in the founding of an American bicycle manufacturing industry.

Col. Albert A. Pope was a Boston industrialist who became obsessed with bicycles in the late 1870s.  He started a bicycle importing business and soon decided to build them himself.  Because Hartford had an abundant supply of skilled metal workers, he opened his first factory here.  Pope's bicycles were sold under the Columbia brand.

I attended a lecture at the Connecticut Historical Society in the autumn about the rise and fall of the bicycle-building industry in Connecticut. It fascinates me how people become expert in very narrow fields. If you are a bike history nut, who do you talk to about it?

World Affairs Council

The World Affairs Council is on Forest Street in Hartford, around the corner from the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Foundation.

The building seems scary to me.  I think it is haunted.

Wadsworth Atheneum

The Wadsworth Atheneum is Hartford's principal art museum.  Currently most of the outside is behind construction barricades, so it is a bit un-lovely.  But, the main entrance remains unscarred by the renovations, so long as I don't stand too far back.

An exhibition of Monet's water lilies opened this week.  This shot was taken in the fall.  There is probably snow, ice and crud there today.

Weekend Reflections: Loomis Pool

Over the decades, Loomis Chaffee has had a very successful aquatic program.  Boys water polo teams compete in the fall, boys and girls swimming and diving teams compete in the winter, and girls water polo competes in the spring.

The walls of Hedges Swimming Pool are lined with banners for championships won, plaques listing the record holders in these sports, and many All-American plaques recognizing Loomis athletes who competed at the highest levels in their sports.

BONUS REFLECTION:  At the left, three cold children outside the Richmond Art Center at Loomis Chaffee look out at a pile of snow, reflected in the window behind them.


On Fridays you can see more Weekend Reflections by visiting Newtown Area Photo.

Mercy Gallery

The Loomis Chaffee School's Mercy Gallery includes a permanent exhibition featuring sculpture by Evelyn Beatrice Longdon Batchelder. Ms. Batchelder was the wife of the first headmaster of the school. She was an eminent sculptor in her own right, who studied under Daniel Chester French and worked with him on the Lincoln Memorial.

Long corridors in the arts center display artwork everywhere, on just about every surface. At left is part of a current exhibition of work by members of the Loomis community. This is a series of photographs of dancers by Jeff Holcombe, a longtime member of the Loomis math and science faculty.  I had some doubts about the propriety of including photos of works by students, so I decided not to show any.  Trust me, though, that there are some very talented artists among the students.

Loomis Chaffee Art Programs

The Loomis Chaffee visual arts programs -- drawing, painting, sculpture and photography -- have facilities that would be the envy of many colleges.  Above is part of the Richmond Art Center, which houses arts instruction as well as the Mercy Gallery, which provides exhibition and gallery space.

The Loomis Chaffee School

The Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, just north of Hartford, is a private coeducational school.  About 60 percent of the students in grades 9 through 12 are boarders and the remaining 40 percent are day students from surrounding cities and towns. 

Founders Hall is the administration building as well as a classroom building.  It anchors one end of Grubb Quadrangle, with the dining hall at the other end and residence halls lining both sides.

Glimmering Gifts

Lux Bond & Green offers a line of colorful gift items.

Did everyone remember Valentine's Day?

Millrace Bookstore

Every year there are fewer independent bookstores.  The big box bookstores drive independents out of business, then the big box model runs into headwinds of its own.  Borders is on the brink of bankruptcy.  Is everyone going to Amazon or e-books?  What happened to the simple pleasure of browsing down aisles of  books to stumble across something completely unexpected?

The Millrace Bookstore is a very small bookstore in Farmington.  It looks over the Farmington River. 

Millrace feels more like a library in a musty old home than a store.  It comes complete with a cat to sit on your lap.  So long as you pick a chair in the sun.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.  Happy birthday, Abe!

The Council of War (1868) is exhibited at the New Britain Museum of American Art.  The sculptor is John Rogers.  We see Lincoln with his Secretary of War, Edward Stanton, and General Ulysses S. Grant, planning the war against the Confederacy.

Weekend Reflections: Will I Be The One?

Not likely.

Go to Newtown Area Photos to see other reflections.

Hill-Stead again

I showed Hill-Stead late in the fall, so I returned to it in the winter for a different atmosphere.

Theodate Pope Riddle, the architect of Avon Old Farms School, shown a couple of weeks ago, also assisted in the design of this house.  She lived here with her parents and later with her husband.

Hill-Stead has some similarities to the Mount Vernon replica I showed yesterday . . . two-story columns forming a porch, symmetrical dormer windows, white siding and black shutters . . . but I think it is a unique house rather than an attempt to replicate Mount Vernon.

Mount Vernon

I read recently that George Washington's home on the Potomac, Mount Vernon, is the most copied house in the country.

Here is a Mount Vernon replica located in West Hartford, near Hartford Golf Club.

Arts of the South and Arts of the City

Thomas Hart Benson painted these fascinating murals in 1932, in the middle of the Depression.  The Arts of the South is at left and part of the Arts of the City is at the right. The entire work comprises five murals filling an entire room at the New Britain Museum of American Art, which is 15 minutes west of Hartford.  The murals were purchased in 1953 from the Whitney Museum in New York, which had commissioned them to fit a room in that museum.

Benson came from a political family.  His uncle of the same name was a U. S. Senator from Missouri.  The artist affiliated with left-wing politics and alienated many in the Establishment arts community with his out-of-fashion realistic style and his abrasive personality.  Today Benton is identified as the leader of the school of art called Regionalism.

Free!!!

Wouldn't you feel like an idiot if you wanted a vitamin that is NOT on sale and had to pay full price?

Practice, Practice, Practice

The stairs from the pro shop and dining rooms at the Hartford Golf Club lead to the driving range.

I think this qualifies for Shadow Shot Sunday.

18th Hole

Fellow bloggers Jacob and Halcyon are golfers.  I thought I would show them the beautiful 18th hole at Hartford Golf Club.  The top view is behind the green.  The bottom view is near the tee boxes, looking up the fairway toward the clubhouse.

It would be a good idea to use colored golf balls these days.  And snowshoes instead of spikes.

Weekend Reflections: Moneychangers at the Temple

The First Church of Christ Congregational occupies a prominent corner in West Hartford Center, across a wide median strip from many storefronts, including Citizens Bank.

It is Friday, so Newtown Area Photos is once again hosting Weekend Reflections.  Take a look.

The Obligatory Snow Storm Photo

OK.  You all know we had another snow storm yesterday.  Well, I'm getting sick of snow storms and I'm getting sick of snow storm photos.  Snow is fine.  Snow storms are %&(^%$*&^.

So, here is a photo of the campus of St. Joseph College, a Catholic woman's college, while snow is falling.  Hartford didn't get hit as bad as other cities this time.

At least until I change my mind, no more storm photos this winter.  There will be plenty of pictures with snow in them, but I hope they will be blue sky snow photos.  A guy has to take a stand.

Housing Developments

These are the last of my airplane photos.  I promise.  They are housing developments photographed from the window of an airplane as it approached the airport serving Hartford.  I thought the patterns were pretty, and they illustrate how much snow was on the ground.  Of course, it snowed hard yesterday and there is even more snow on the ground now.  Not that you could tell from this high . . .

(I think the smaller bottom photo is worth clicking on.)

Theme Day: Corning Fountain

The February theme for City Daily Photo participants is "Fountains."  It isn't easy finding a good fountain to photograph in New England in the winter.  Most have been turned off and drained.

Today's guest photographer, my daughter Susie, took some great fountain photos when she visited Hartford two weeks ago, in mid-January.

This is the Corning Fountain in Bushnell Park, a park in Hartford's downtown.  It is a big, complicated  fountain with an American Indian theme.  The stag at the top is a "hart," from which Hartford is named.

The fountain's donor was a member of the family that founded Corning Glass in upstate New York.

Isn't Susie a terrific photographer?  This is the last post from the set of pictures she took in her last Hartford visit.  Many more of Susie's photos are on Flickr.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants in City Daily Photo's February Theme Day.