TOURING HISTORIC Hartford - Connecticut

Travel America, Sept, 2001 by Tom Bross

Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn here in Connecticut's capital, a bastion of history and culture

In Connecticut's midsection, two interstate highways converge in a dipsy-do tangle of underpasses and bridges. So you'd be quite accurate in calling that busy intersection the crossroads of America's third smallest state (after Rhode Island and Delaware). Which makes Hartford conveniently accessible from any direction: north, south, east, or west. Just the right place for a capital city.

But it's certainly not big (pop. 133,000), all the better for finding your way around. Get oriented by strolling through Bushnell Park, a "can't-miss" part of the urban layout. Right in the heart of downtown, the 37 acres of manicured greenery include a bandstand and open-air stage, elaborate Corning Fountain, a pond for summertime cooldown, and a pavilion containing a 1914 carousel with four dozen hand-carved horses merry-go-rounding (50 [cts.] a ride) to the tunes of a vintage Wurlitzer band organ. Near Bushnell's southeastern corner, the neo-Tudor Pump House Gallery showcases changing exhibits of contemporary Connecticut art.

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch stands tall at the park's northern approaches alongside Trinity Street. Dedicated in 1886, the twin-turreted brownstone structure honors 4,000 citizens who served in Union forces during the Civil War. Up toward the turrets, a terra-cotta frieze depicts episodes symbolizing that divisive conflict.

Head a short distance south from there to admire Hartford's grandest and gaudiest edifice, the State Capitol, preceding the arch by eight years in the city's timeline. This hilltop whopper exemplifies High Victorian magnitude and layered-on ornamentation, surmounted by a gilded dome that gleams in sunshine. Step inside to view polished granite columns, stained-glass accents, and gold-stenciled atrium ceilings, plus bullet-riddled battle flags and, in the East Lobby, a larger-than-life statue of Connecticut-born Revolutionary War patriot Nathan Hale ("I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country"). Free one-hour guided tours are conducted daily except Sundays.

Austere by comparison but loaded with historical significance, the Old State House was Bostonian Charles Bulfinch's first sizeable commission (he went on to design the Massachusetts and New Hampshire capitols). Completed in 1796, the colonnaded Federal-style building occupies a fence-enclosed patch of real estate where, 157 years earlier, colonial conventioneers drafted and signed our nation's first written constitution, entitled the Fundamental Orders. Reason enough for "America's Constitution State" to be emblazoned on Connecticut license plates.

Amidst ever-so-serious paintings of the state's long succession of governors, watch for a George Washington portrait by Rhode Islander Gilbert Stuart. The Senate and Council chambers have been faithfully restored, a downstairs museum store stocks Connecticut crafts, and a ceremonial cannon goes "ka-boom!" each morning and afternoon.

A block away, the pointy-topped Travelers Tower rises 527 feet skyward here in "Insurance City," where Travelers, Aetna, Phoenix Home Life, and Connecticut Mutual proclaim corporate pedigrees going back to pre-Civil War decades. The tower's free-admission observatory is an ideal vantage point for bird's-eye panoramas of the city, suburbs, and surrounding Connecticut River Valley terrain.

Directly across Main Street, Center Church (modeled after London's St.Martin-in-the-Fields) is embellished by stained-glass windows from the New York studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Behind it: the Ancient Burying Ground, final resting place of Hartford's Puritan founders. Inscriptions on the gravestones chronicle births and deaths from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries.

What looks like a rock-solid Gothic castle is actually the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford's cultural pride and joy. It's the country's oldest public art museum in continuous operation--159 years as of 2001, to be exact. More than 50,000 works spanning 50 centuries are inside, and Alexander Calder's Stegosaurus sculpture dominates the courtyard. "The Circus in Twentieth Century American Art," a special exhibition running October 19 through January 6, looks at life under the Big Top.

Collections mainly cover Renaissance and Baroque paintings, Mediterranean antiquities, European Impressionist and Surrealist works, New England-crafted silverware, costumes, and textiles, African-American art and artifacts. Early American furniture and decorative arts adorn period rooms. Third-floor galleries are devoted to canvases by notable U.S. artists including William Merritt Chase, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt.

The Wadsworth is especially well-known for a major assemblage of Hudson River School paintings--epic 19th-century landscapes by Thomas Cole, Frederick Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and other glorifiers of the great outdoors. Thanks to bequests made by Hartford native J. Pierpont Morgan's son, other galleries display the billionaire financier's treasure trove of ancient bronzes, Renaissance-era majolica, 17th century silver-gilt objects, and Meissen and Sevres porcelains.