If one were to ask residents of Connecticut for their opinion on Hartford, the state’s capitol city, their responses would generally be negative. In 2023, Hartford is seen by those who live outside of it as an unsafe, unsavory city that should generally be avoided. This mindset has manifested as a Downtown area that empties out after the workday, leaving the cars traveling through Interstate 91 and 84 as the only thing to be heard. If we look back at Hartford’s urban renewal initiatives throughout the 20th century, we can gain insight into the city’s decline from one of the wealthiest cities in the US to what it is today.
From the early years of the United States until the mid-20th century, Hartford was an important and wealthy northeastern city, home to manufacturing firms such as Pratt and Whitney Machine Tool and Colt Firearms, as well as many insurance companies. Hartford was also host to several 19th century influential writers such as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who happened to be neighbors, and The Mark Twain House has since become a historic landmark. Not all was perfect, as poverty did still exist in the city, but Hartford’s outward appearance was still of a city of wealth and prosperity.
The events that led up to the construction of the highways through Hartford, and the subsequent decline of the city can be traced back to the Great Migration. Around the early 20th century, swathes of African Americans motivated by continuous racial segregation and prejudice left the southern United States in search of new homes. One of those destinations was Hartford, where migrants from Georgia went to work on the tobacco farms in the areas surrounding Hartford. Some of those migrants ended up settling in the North End neighborhood, which they shared with Eastern European immigrants for a period of time. However, as many of those European immigrants moved out of the North End, the neighborhood became more concentrated with black residents, effectively segregating them.
Another important factor in the reshaping of Hartford was the New Deal, a series of programs enacted by President Roosevelt through the 1930s. Part of the New Deal was the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, in an attempt to boost American homeownership. What resulted was a practice known as “redlining”, where lenders withheld money from neighborhoods they deemed hazardous to investment, often for discriminatory reasons. Hartford was no stranger to these redlining practices, in fact, many of the neighborhoods in the city were considered suboptimal for investment. Less developed areas in West Hartford were seen as ripe opportunities for investment and home construction, eventually leading to wealthier residents of Hartford moving away from the city center to the new suburbs.
With these new suburbs came the need to connect them. In 1947, urban planner Robert Moses proposed a high-speed expressway through the middle of Hartford, with the express intent of cutting off the previously mentioned North End neighborhood from the rest of Hartford. Moses’s plan came to fruition in 1964 with the construction of the Hartford Viaduct that became part of Interstate-84, with many parts of the city being demolished to make way for it. An account from a Hartford resident returning from Vietnam after the highway was finished emphasized the negative effects it had on the denizens of Hartford, namely the Downtown area. What was once the bustling city center was now awash with office buildings for those living in the suburbs outside the city to drive to for work using those highways.