What was done to America from the late 1950s through 1980s was a crime against humanity... the loss of architecture amd destruction of our cities and communities was absolutely criminal.
Do you want to live in a city that's 46% Hispanic , 36% black, and 15% white. Are you sending your kids to those "culturally enriched" public schools? Its called white flight and the crime was forced integration..
The truth is people don't want to live in cities. A city is where you live when you can't afford a home in the suburbs! You move up and you move out of the city and get yourself a nice house with a yard.
@@thomaskalbfus2005that's just not true... if the cities were nice people would love to live there... Americans are just used to their cities being dumps... if we had invested in our cities like Europe and not destroyed them it would be like there where everyone wants to live there and the suburbs are lame...plus, most American cities also have houses with yards...
@daveweiss5647 I live in a city, but it is not a city city, it has a population of about 20,000 people not the millions of New York City, which is usually what I think of when I think of a city. Really big cities have problems because too many people decided to live there. The government of New York City has decided that it has better things to do than arrest people for petty larceny or vagrants. New York City is the Venue where they are trying to arrest Donald Trump to get him out of the presidential race, that is they have a political motivation to arrest him and they are trying to find something they can call a crime so they can have an excuse to arrest him, it is so Dukes of Hazzard! The people standing outside the court house cheered when the biased Jury found him guilty on 35 counts of whatever. So my take on this is that too many New York City residents don't want a presidential race that is competitive because most of them are immigrants from the third world and having a dictatorship for them is normally how they think a country should be run!
@@thomaskalbfus2005 You are correct about NYC (and basically every major American city) being hopelessly and criminally corrupt dumps... because they are one party incompetent corrupt governments that have run them into the ground... with good leadership they could be good places to live... but are not... it is a great American tragedy and a symptom of tue rotninfecting our country... you are also correct about the corrupt travesty that just took place their... this is no long a free or just country...
I live in the Hartford area. I grew up here and work in downtown Hartford. I try to explain to people that this city used to be a jewel, but few comprehend. This video presents that story better than I could ever explain. Thank you. I am going to share this publicly and with friends and family
After the 1970s Connecticut only prospers when rich New Yorkers are afraid to raise their kids in New York City. The mistake Hartford and Stanford made was that when tons of minorities left New York in 2000s with their new middle class dollars and tried to setup in Connecticut, Connecticut treated them like shit to the point thousands of them up and either moved to Providence, Boston or New York - taking an almost 20% drop in GDP with them. Making it hard for large multi-national companies to stay in places like New Haven and Hartford due to progressive new graduates not wanting to deal with CT's bullshit and just setting up in either NYC or Boston many even went to Providence - making Connecticut the worst hit state after the financial collapse and even after Covid their economy isn't keeping up with inflation. This also contributed to Connecticut having one of the highest age groups in the country. What does that mean? Low rates of tech innovation, the #1 industry in the country right now. What sense does it make to open up a large technology company in Connecticut when no one under 40 wants to deal with people who are mentally stuck in the 1980s and who are going to call the cops anytime they see a minority in a luxury car (which was RAMPANT in the 2000s). Connecticut is fucked and it's not the fault of welfare or highways. Connecticut is the Long Island of New England and until it collapses it's not going to change. Connecticut in 2024 produces nothing, but puts up every road block possible for outsiders to come in and make something out of the state. Massachusetts and Vermont both learned this lesson and they've been thriving because of it for almost 15 years now.
@@iamcase1245 idk about all that. Not denying any of it….ill add, imo, CT is set up to be a suburban based economy. Corporate business parks are spread out in the suburbs not in city centers. This definitely hurt during the 2000s and 2010s when young people wanted to live in vibrant urban areas. I think CT was set up well for COVID as more people wanted more personal living space. But, I agree the fundamentals aren’t there. Besides financial services and some defense manufacturing we don’t offer much
@@BrewsBrothersCT Look up the stats I mentioned, youtube wont let me post links or images but they're all online. I'm a New Yorker who contracted on-and-off all over Connecticut during the 2000s and early 2010s and saw it for myself. You'd go to a large office campus and half the contractors were from New York or Massachusetts and we were only being contracted because not only did Connecticut barely have any high-grade tech workers at the time, the young people that did graduate from Connecticut schools with high end skills were high tailing it to NYC, Boston, and even *Providence*. The vast majority of the time when they would offer us permanent jobs we'd reject them because of the culture and no one wants to live in Manhattan but commute to Hartford for the rest of their lives. Also Boston wasn't THAT much more vibrant than any Connecticut city going back historically and Providence was a little sleepy city even in the early 2000s but they both adapted.
I feel like the only way I can convince my fellow Americans to go for public transit/passenger rail is by saying “we used to have the greatest in the world”; never underestimate how motivated by a sense of national superiority nearly every American can get.
My daughter and I were driving through Hartford. I thought I'd stop to show her the Old State House. We parked ina garage nearby and walked to the State House Museum and it was closed in a Saturday, because when the office workers leave, Hartford is a ghost town. My daughter asked where all the people were. Nobody was outside walking. It was like a dystopian, post apocalyptic movie.
I live in the suburbs. I started working in Hartford in the late 70's. I always wondered what it looked like before most of it was bulldozed. The amount of office space has at least tripled since then. Most suburbanites won't go to Hartford at night anymore because of the gang/drug violence. My favorite spot was an original 1700's graveyard next to the Gold Building that couldn't be removed. It's inscription seems apt: "Death is a debt to Nature due, which I have paid, and so must you."
Oh my god. It's no wonder Americans feel less proud of their country than they used to. We had something to be proud of back then. The only part of Hartford worth caring about is reduced to a single street.
@@WildsDreams45 Lol.. yes.. every empire falls, but almost none of them actually dismantle what was part of their ''golden age''. The US only cares about cars, not about functioning city districts or history. This is the sad thing, this is why everyone there should be mad at the thing that happened. Again: this doesn't happen on this scale in my country, even we've been past our ''golden age'' for centuries now. Maybe not having to try to stay relevant, as the US dropped in democracy index, freedom index, so on, will eventually be a good thing- as a former global hegemony, doesn't have to invest as much into war as they used to. But lol, that's I think a thing the US will never acknowledge. Sad.
the other ones are depressing, this one is downright horrific. The loss of places, homes, neighborhoods, architecture, etc is just makes you kind of sick to your stomach. people lived there
they just moved to the suburbs, you'll find tons of country manor estates and well-kept suburbs the world would be envious of just outside the downtown. the city itself is just a shell because of altered tendencies in the population (they want land, privacy, etc.).
@@bartlett2335 Yes, my family came to the USA as Colonialists for the chance at obtaining land (a lot of it) and to eventually own something similar to the English country manors once occupied by Lords and Ladies. You don't get to have that living in a city.
@@bartlett2335Cities like Boston and Portland maine also have those suburbs without the same levels of decay and abandonment in the city center. They both have lost population and suffered loss buisiness but their city centers are thriving compared to Hartford.
No, don’t finish this series please 😭. We need to see so many more - Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Syracuse, Atlanta. Heck, once upon a time even LA was great and had the largest light rail network.
You can see the history of other American cities on other YT channels. But I think it’s good he stopped here or else it would get too depressing to make and watch.
@@SIRdonnybguilty No, why would I? they are inconvenient. The amount of rail infrastructure that would be needed for that to be feasible would make this video look like nothing. Public transit is really not an option for a lot of working people. I look at people I know personally, who own business that require motor vehicles, like a foundation repair company, or an HVAC installer (I own a lawn care business myself, and there really is no way around the fact that a truck is essential and can't simply be replaced by some form of public transit). There is just no way that any form of public transit could replace the convenience and freedom that an individual has with a car of his own, with which he can go anywhere, whenever he chooses.
@@NJHProductions512 This is my point: the video decries the ruin of Hartford by parking lots, but no one is willing to give up the convenience of wider roads and huge parking lots. So, if Hartford is reduced to a lot of pavement, no one should complain about the city's ugliness.
@@SIRdonnybguilty I think you can have the best of both worlds, it just requires good planning. For example, instead of having 4 blocks dedicated solely to parking, just use one and build a multi level parking garage.
One thing that I've noticed about our culture is that it wasn't until recently that the general public has started to even acknowledge the past. I remember growing up as a kid that our culture looked upon the older generations as fools with outdated technology and outdated beliefs. Replacing the old with the new was seen as progress, but we were too arrogant to realize that our ancestors had wisdom that was worth learning from. If we've been building beauty and walkability since ancient times, is there not a reason for it? I remember one of my school teachers talking to our class about how outdated trains are because they're slower and the routes are predetermined. I don't even remember what grade I was in, but I just looked at the photos of old trains in our history book thinking that was such an obvious conclusion, not even realizing that we once boasted the greatest railways on Earth, even by today's standards. Something that should've been passed down us with great pride was looked down upon as "outdated" and reduced to mostly forgotten history. It infuriates me when people say that America is "too big" for rail when the entire continent was already fully connected by rail over a century ago. Please continue this series. We need more Americans to know just how much was truly stolen from them.
Well said. Thank you for such an amazing comment. This series will be brought back soon. But I do think it is important to shed light on some other talking points such as cities that are doing things right, as well as discussing some of the debates I see people having in the comments section.
Great comment. I hope that America can go back to dense beautiful cities again. San Francisco is beautiful for that reason, which I think is a model design wise for great cities.
@@alexanderrotmenszim from europe but looking at things like this im coming to only one conclusion similiar to this comment It's fact that americans tried to look very modern not caring about respect to the past and europeans tried to done the same but even communist countries decided to not go too far because of people nostalgia and respect to some buildings (for example they wanted to tear down half of Poznań old town for park but they realised that this is completly not paying off)
The biggest problem with Americans is their willful ignorance. If you explain all this stuff to them, they accuse you of wanting to take away their cars. This type of attitude is even taking hold in the UK now with people complaining every time a new cycle lane is built, making the argument that nobody uses them. Well, yeah, you won't see many people using them when you're zipping along at 30-40 mph in your car. If you got on a bike and used them, you'd see that other people do use them. You also get people over here complaining that there's nowhere to park their cars in towns and cities now. They accuse councils of taking away parking spaces, but never stop to think that the reason why they can't find a parking space may be due to the sheer amount of people who drive cars now compared to in the past (and when I say past, I'm only talking like 20 years ago as there's been a huge increase in the amount of cars on the road in this country since then), meaning all of the parking spaces have already been taken by other people in cars. With amount of cars on the road now, if councils decided to give every driver their own parking space, most of our public spaces would be transformed into huge parking lots, which is exactly what you guys in America are dealing with. I think our councils are actually making the right decision by constructing cycle lanes. It's the attitudes of most of the car driving public that's acting as a barrier to a happier, healthier society.
Man… watching any video or doing any research of American cities pre “Urban Renewal” era is just amazing. It’s almost unbelievable how much history, architecture, cityscape, culture, ways of life were destroyed.
Yes, we destroy the old for the new; or, we just let the old rot and decay until it falls down on its own, then we replace it with something new. We do that in small towns just as we do that in larger cities. Letting go of the past for the sake of progress has always been the way we do things in the USA. When we're not willing to let go of the past, we are chided.
@@laurie7689 More like we throw out the perfectly functional 'old' the moment something new and shiny comes along, even if it's worse than what we had before. Typical symptom of the throwaway, consumerist culture that we've created.
@@Hanstra Unfortunately, human progress has almost always been about replacing the old tried and tested ways with new learn as we go ways. I suppose that is what Human dreams and hopes prompt us to do. We tend to be a species that looks to the future while paying little attention to the past and present. We have a "The End Justifies The Means" mentality.
@@laurie7689 except Hartford declined in the 1950s which is why they built a highway through it since most people moved to the suburbs. Not every building is important. By your logic we should all be living like ancient Mesopotamians. You admire the modern city of Paris? Well Georges-Eugène Haussmann had to raze suburbs to the ground
A native of Hartford, I remember trips to the city in the early 1960s before all of the damage was done. Suburbs of West Hartford, East Hartford, Farmington, Avon, Canton, and Simsbury, and Bloomfield have sprung from the still-decaying city. Recent efforts to encourage the conversion of vacant office buildings into residential units offers hope that the downtown will be transformed.
I grew up in Hartford area and worked and retired from prison system as a correctional officer. The amount of inmates from frog hollow, hartford, waterbury. new britain, willimantic, bristol, new haven, bridgeport was staggering. Hartford was beautiful in the early days, and I recall it...GFox and how pretty it was during Xmas, but now since all the highway development and the destruction of so many older buildings, it's a crime-riddled nest, as are many other cities. This isn't something new. This has been a systemic misappropriation of funds and tax dollars that were NEVER reinvested into these places and crooked Governors. Rowland, Weicker were horrible. Only Governor that did anything helpful was Ella Grosso. All the state police and correctional officers knew that Rowland was a wife batterer and the state police covered it up "allegedly" so he could become Chief.
I live just outside of Hartford, and took the bus into the city for school. I walk past most of the photographed locations in this video on a daily basis. Hartford is a city with a population of just over 100,000, while its metropolitan area clocks in at over a million. How many cities have a suburban population more than 10 times itself? The issue is that almost all the money that is generated in Hartford is done so through a select few insurance companies, and then taken out of the city into the suburbs (which are wealthy indeed) by the insurance workers. There is no night life in Hartford, downtown is a mixture of insurance professionals and homeless people, there is very little tourist attraction whatsoever… so many poor people suffering while wealthy professionals suck all the resources out of the city and leave… there’s nothing quite like it, I would encourage anyone to visit downtown Hartford to witness the stark contrast for themselves.
@@awepossum1059 Maybe more people would want to live in the cities if they weren't destroyed. Want to know why there are so many suburbs to begin with? Look up "White Flight".
This is a superb video about a shocking situation that few know about. It serves as such a warning to other cities! Many cities have deteriorated due to industry leaving, but this city was actively destroyed by people without a heart. Thank you.
Yep I lived in Hartford for many years and now live in West Hartford. Hartford is still making the mistakes of the past. CCMC (tax exempt children's hospital) is about to build another parking garage for a cool $40 million, in a neighborhood where car ownership rates are among the lowest in the country and childhood asthma rates are some of the highest in the region. The president of the Bushnell is fighting to prevent a massive bomb crater of a surface lot from being developed into a mix use neighborhood so his suburban customers can park for free (parking is included in ticket prices, who does that help again?). You flashed a photo of the Bushnell parking lot on a busy day, but 99% of the time it's just an empty lot. Hartford has great people but also a lot of problems.
My opinion is to just let the city municipality go bankrupt like Detroit. I highly doubt those new developments contribute enough in property tax to even pay for the maintenance 10 years down the line. Hell, some of those parking lots look run down already
Everybody here complaining about the city while living in the burbs and driving everywhere. I wonder what is driving this demand for parking... I grew up in CT. Everybody thinks they're progressive but they wouldn't dare live next to minorities in the city center. Nothing is going to change until the people do.
I've always meant to visit Hartford as it is about 2 hours away. Not now! What a shame. As one old time told me, "we spent the war years flattening beautiful European cities, then we came home and did it to ourselves."
I used to go to Hartford to see the beautiful Christmas display, but one year they decided that a projector of some snowflakes would suffice as a replacement. Unfortunately, prior to that, I'd have told you to visit just to see that.
Unintended consequences--We started the car culture and the longing for our own little patch of suburbia because we didn't know what we were losing. No one was far sighted enough to see that, in the tearing up of the inner cities to build the interstates and expressways to take us out of the city, we were leaving all our community support behind. Churches and museums got left behind as fast food and malls took over. We sacrificed history and beauty and resources and culture to the lure of individualism and consumerism. What is the life of the average suburb now, about 20 - 25 years? We shouldn't forget that suburbs eventually die too as people keep driving to the "newer and better" one.
Exactly, most older inner ring suburbs are in just as bad of shape as the central cities. The more prosperous folks flee to the lower density outer ring suburbs with their wide highways, huge yards and McMansions. The doughnut hole has greatly expanded to include the central cities and first ring suburbs entirely.
@@karenryder6317 The dutch had the foresight and gave up on following the US urban planning model. I'm pretty sure the US government had the foresight too, but who needs foresight when you get money from lobbyists?
@@stefaniliev7040 Britain has relatively recent come to this conclusion too, the car, the motorway and out of town malls don't really work in small Countries. After 60yrs though, its the public who are the ones who don't want the change their minds.
This is so heartbreaking. My mom grew up outside of Hartford and in the 40s and 50s when she was a girl, I am sure that "going into Hartford" was an interesting adventure, still. And for her parents, it was what they knew. Thanks for sharing this.
I can tell the narrator is from the west coast. Out there you say "The I-95" and "The I-84". Out here it's just "Don't take 95, hop on 287 over the Tappan Zee to 15 to 91 to 84 to The Mass Pike"
@joekingsley7642 It will always be called the "Tappan Zee" or just the "Tap" even if it's unofficial. The "Gov.Mario Cuomo Bridge" has never taken hold and probably never will
Hartford isn’t alone in this urban malaise, New Haven did the exact same destructive urban renewal. My birthplace city of Niagara Falls NY did this exact same destructive urban renewal and now the city is an impoverished, violent crime infested garbage dump loaded with toxic industrial brownfields. Gary IN is another completely destroyed blue collar city that has completely empty and overgrown urban blocks. An empty street grid where neighborhoods once existed.
Almost all of it comes down to old laws put in place by automobile lobbies that required a parking spot for every person (not family, person) that could occupy a business, which required lots of parking when building a new business. And the construction of the abomination that is 84, which needed a lot of prime land, since it cut literally through the center of Hartford. Meaning all the nice normal houses and the small businesses supporting them all demolished to build probably the worst 4-6mi stretch of road in the state. But a vitaly important one since it connects to so much of downtown and about half a dozen other important highways, literally 200 ft outside the borders of downtown. Like every clearly visible problem currently in the area is from the presence of 84.
@@r.pres.4121 Truly depressing prospect. Hopefully, future generations will exercise an infinitely more discerning eye when it comes to urban historical preservation.
This video was fantastic dude. You've managed to sum up what I've tried to explain to people over days and weeks into a 9 minute video. Your editing is great, and the visuals are devastating. Please keep making this series.
Breaks my heart as an old englander, too My partner's american, and there is a lot I love about the United States, the open country, wildnerness, the opportunities to hunt, camp, hike, the old country towns, the traditional architecture with clapboard, the intrinsic, inextricable links between our countries and our ancestry too However, this corporate disregard for history, communities bith pat and present and culture by corporate america is frankly disgusting, and tyrannical, and is what I (and my partner, as well as I believe any other good, truly patriotic american should) despise about the US, how greed rules nearly everything, and before somewhat someone starts, no, I'm not anticapitalist, you've got the wrong idea, I believe in capitlism but you got to protect and favor culture and community over solely generating capital, otherwise society starts to fail, as we r currently witnessing - there's no social glue, people turn against each other as theyre made to feel theyve nothing in common, what is the point of generating billions if there's no society in which to enjoy such wealth? Or is this final point too insightful for the average wall street pig trougher?
I work in Hartford and it’s such a strange feeling walking/driving around there. It feels both like the city has so much potential and that something amazing used to be there, especially when you look at Pratt St and see that it’s really the only place where the city seems to have any sort of life. Thanks for this video, I had no idea what used to be here. I’m just glad that they kept the old Colt building in Hartford, you can’t miss that crazy blue dome!
Actually, he only cared about car culture. The railings along the West Side highway, which he designed in NYC, are at exactly the right height so that when you are seated at any of the many public benches along the highway, your view of the Hudson River (on the other side of the highway) is completely obscured. 😢
Live near Hartford and this is devastating to see. My dad, who grew up in nearby New Britain (which has a similar story to Hartford and would be an excellent addition to the series), tells me a similar story about how the city he grew up in was torn down for highways and reduced to the poor, concrete-laden city it is now.
would you have preferred that he stayed and you had the opportunity to attend the awesome public school system there? Nothing beats immersing one self in diversity and the cultural enrichment it offers school age children. Its sad he moved you to the suburbs and deprived you of these experiences.
@@mikeborrelli193 He moved well before I was born. Also I did some of my student teaching in New Britain so got a taste of the diversity there, and that was very eye-opening, but NB has a reputation for being a very poor school system now. (Had some field experience at one of their middle schools and it was very rough, but my student teaching at NBHS was really good.)
Born in Hartford grew up in New Britain and lived there until I retired. I saw how both cities were devastated by highways and corruption and lack of planning. I now live in New Mexico and miss the multi-ethnic food and culture back home. And the proximity to the ocean. Oh well.
I grew up in Hartford and still live there, however I and four of my siblings attended private parochial schools. We're glad we missed out on the diversity. @@mikeborrelli193
My hometown of Rockville, CT followed the same pattern on a smaller scale. Urban renewal saw the elimination of a large part of a thriving business district, which was replaced by a strip mall. The remaining business eventually closed or move to a new center near the highway. The one fortunate thing was that many of the old factories and houses were preserved and/or designated as historical, so at least the place still has character.
This video could have been made about any of Connecticut's "major" cities: Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, or New Haven. All of them were thriving and bustling cities until the last half of the 20th Century. Connecticut made a big bet on fostering a suburban, car-oriented culture and for 50-odd years, that thrived. CT had the ultimate suburbs in Greenwich, Westport, Darien, New Canaan, etc. Now that GE abandoned its headquarters in Fairfield, CT lost one of its economic anchors and its bet on the suburbs is being paid off with stagnant income, shrinking population, and no major cultural center. I feel very sad about my former home.
Bridgeport is horrid. At least New Haven (with all its issues) has Yale. Sadly they gutted almost the entire west and south sides of the areas surrounding the New Haven green in favor of brutalist designs and parking lots. And the coliseum is one of the ugliest structures I've ever seen. But hey, parking.
@@glennhavinoviski8128 New Haven is in the process of remedying a decent amount of that right now. Lots of new housing and mixed use developments going up in those areas + more bike infrastructure on certain streets. Still lots of people complaining about a lack of parking though. Better than nothing.
@@kevincosgrove4954 That's probably why its wealthy, the lack of big cities where homeless people can live and beg on the street thus dragging down the average income. New York City makes New York poorer with all those homeless people, slums, and crime ridden neighborhoods.
crazy how it puts things in perspective. we really sold our soul to the auto industry as a society. all this beautiful architecture, gone for the sake of parking garages and highways
Thank you for this; I grew up 10 miles away across the river. It's heartbreaking seeing the broken, divided city I've known my whole life as it once was: vibrant and alive.
Thank you so much for these videos. It's important to keep this history around for people who say "America is too spread out for transit." No, we had cities just like Europe did for hundreds of years and we chose to destroy them in favor of sprawl. There's nothing natural about this outcome, and had we not bulldozed so much of our core city centers, we might be able to talk about Hartford like we talk about Delft, or Utrecht, a smaller city near a megacity that has lots of charm without being overwhelming.
One thing people fail to realize is that the railroads were owned by robber barons who were in the business of making money first, moving goods and people second. No one had the stomach for bailing out the evil railroaders when expansions or improvements were necessary. Most people were happy to see them fail. They had a nice shiny new car which took them directly to and from their nice shiny new homes in the suburbs. What could go wrong?
25 years ago my partner and I visited Hartford on a trip down the East Coast and I remarked to him, "This is a fifth-rate town." Now I know why - three fourths of the city was made blighted, torn down and replaced with parking lots and highways! 😳
Both Hartford and New Haven wanted to become slumless cities by demolishing as much of their old housing stock and old commercial buildings as humanly possible. However urban renewal and the interstates failed both cities and now they are two dead empty urban cores. At least both Bridgeport and Waterbury still have a significant amount of their old urban cores.
Fun fact: there is only 1 TRAIN YOU CAN TAKE IN HARTFORD. The train station literally only has one track now and it only goes between New Haven and Springfield MA
i went to college in hartford and honestly love the city, there's still so much to see and do if you walk past 15 parking lots to find it. it's unbelievable how much denser and more exciting it could be. theres also a lot to say about the crazy transit situation these days with CT Rail and the Fast track
I moved to Hartford twice. Once in the late 80's and then again in the early 2000's for work. Being from the South, the first thing I noticed was how rude the people were - even at my place of employment. Co-workers would openly "mock" my accent to my face and behind my back. Also, it was just natural for me to say "Good Morning" to people when I arrived at work. They would either walk right by me or just stare. I lived in East Hartford and would take the bus home. The same 20 people would be at that bus stop in the morning and evening, and no one talked to each other - dead silence. How sad. When I first moved to Hartford - someone told me "The people who work in Hartford don't live there and the people who live in Hartford don't work." Totally true! I will never go back.
I used to work in downtown Hartford. I knew they had done some bad urban renewal but I had no idea of the scale of it. Its tragic. I'm truly shocked. Although, one good reason to go to downtown Hartford is the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which is a fantastic art museum.
Who else is about to cry? I recommend Albany... it was a top 10 city until 1850 and now utterly lifeless. They built a massive concrete office complex called the "Empire State Plaza" right in the heart of the city, destroying its soul.
Hmm. My memory is that Albany (and Troy and Schenectady--my home town) were already destroyed and Govenor Nelson Rockefeller was actually trying to spruce up and encourage some reinvestment into the state's capital city and its architecture when that plaza was built.
@@karenryder6317 The area around the Governor's Mansion was a combination of working-class neighborhoods that did not impress visitors to the capital of (what was) the US's most populous state. Also, Rocky thought that this was the only solution to keep state employees downtown, which would be a net benefit to the city. Unfortunately, no one wanted to walk a few blocks outside and patronize local businesses; they preferred to take the elevator down to their cars and get on the highways out of Albany.after work. I don't know whether it was worth destroying 98 acres of the city just to make Albany look a little "bigger and better"; that question is for minds greater than mine.
. . . Albany- that Plaza . . . looks Hitlerian, or Stalinist, in Character . . . it tells the Common Cirizen- "Bow Down, to your Overlords- you, are worth, exactly . . . Nothing" . . . . . . one, literally has to Descend into Darkness . . . to Ascend, to the offices of NYS Lawmakers . . . . . . and one wonders, why The Power Elite there . . . has so little regard, for The Ordinary Person, Family, or Community . . .
Here in Finland we have a thing called "Turun tauti" (Disease of Turku). It refers to the demolition of old historical architecture for new construction. It happened mostly in Turku in the 60's and 70's but also in other cities to some extent. People are sad about it to this day as many beautiful buildings were dismantled. This however blows my mind. Leveling entire cities for parking lots and freeways... At least for us there was a new building replacing the old.
I find it hard to believe Finland destroys so many of its old bldgs. Here in UK we thought the nordic nations, like Finland, were careful and loving of their culture and especially environment.
Nobody wastes space quite like us Americans do. It’s in our cultural DNA to destroy what is already here and to replace it with something useful in the short-term. This video is incredible
I was born and raised in Connecticut and have always known in my adult life that Connecticut is the “forgotten ugly middle child”stuck between Boston and New York. Your video proves me right. The politics here suck.
I moved from Hartfords suburbs to the city proper because I recognized its beauty. The downtown was almost entirely replaced, but much of the surrounding city fabric remains. There are still beautiful, historic buildings that need to be saved. There is a small force in Hartford fighting the good fight. Carey Shea is one of the leaders of that movement. She has worked tirelessly to save a house owned by the local church who wanted to turn it into a parking lot. She also saved a historic building owned by Hartford Hospital who wanted to tear it down for seemingly no reason. But there are still places that fall to the hand of foolish people. One instance was a historic chapel owned by a neighboring synagogue. We could not convince them not to tear it down despite being built by women in the 1880s.
Maybe, in the not too distant future, a group of forward thinking civic minded people will restore this once proud city to its rightful state by taking for their inspiration the transformation that has occurred in Dresden Germany (which you did mention). Dresden, a bombed out shell of a city after WWII, has been and still is being restored block by block based on the photographs and documents still in existence. Nothing short of a miracle to see. Thanks for this illuminating series and the thought and care taken in producing each upload.
Truman's post WWII aide was given to rebuild German cities and then, ironically, the US very soon thereafter began tearing up our own cities with "urban renewal (and redlining)" and interstates/super-expressways! Good ole Robert Moses had a fanatical vision that most of us bought into.
Hartford 400 was supposed to be the answer here - basically a big dig style answer. But it keeps getting shot down in the state Senate because it lacks bipartisan support, even though Dems have a supermajority in state government
I live 10 minutes north of Hartford via I-84. My dad worked in insurance there my whole life, I've been there many times and enjoy history. Last week, I was going to the lovely improv theatre, SeaTea, with my parents and went "Wait... That's the old statehouse. There's literally nothing sacred in this city. I've seen small Massachusetts towns protect their history better than we've treated our state capital down here.
@@lifeinaditch In general yes, but interstates can go diagonally and curve a lot. I live north east of hartford. I-95 runs north/south yet runs almost parallel to the CT shoreline at some areas aka west/east
I like the picture of the Hartford Civic Center! When I was 17 in 1981 I drove down 91 from Mass to see AC/DC there, it was awesome! Even back in 81 there was no big attraction to going to downtown Hartford (or most any other US city for that matter) to shop or eat. The US has been in suburbia mode for decades because people don’t like being crammed into annoying and small places.
I've lived near Hartford most of my life. Most of the wealth had left for the suburbs a long time ago. The construction of Interstate 84 destroyed a thriving neighborhood downtown. While I-91 did little damage, the use of the waterfront property has been used mostly for conerts and a long walking trail. Hartford also is a small city land size wise and due to the many government buildings there, doesn't get much tax dollars to their coffers,
Providence has similar issues with taxes. They've managed to get the colleges to pay something in replacement, but they keep having to threaten for more, as Brown in particular keeps buying more land and buildings.
The city’s doom loop started long after I-91 and i-84 were built. The lack of a tax base, combined with crime and poor quality schools led to extreme white flight to the burbs in the 1970’s. There was somewhat of a revival in the 1980’s, but consolidation in the banking and insurance industries drastically reduced white collar employment. The few companies that were left decamped to the burbs, where it’s safer and more convenient. There’s really no reason for Hartford to exist anymore.
I see this debate all the time...both are true and none is wrong. I am pretty it can be described as a feedback loop where both factors contributed to each other.
For many of them they won the war and the building of these new suburbs was seen as a way to escape the crowded and dirty cities. The idea initially was people who owned homes could have the space for their own lawns and gardens. The problem is that homemaker generations disappeared, the cute suburban houses became ugly prefab mcmansions, the suburban street went from trees and beautiful fence work to boring and desolate homes on an empty field. But boomers entering the workforce, the rising prices of automobiles, the loss of third spaces contributed greatly towards this.
Their plan was efficiency for car circulation. At the time urban planning Orthodoxy all over the world took a very strict view of land use zoning; an area for industrial, an area residential, an area for retail and an area for office space. These were separated mainly because faster transport enabled people to travel from one area to the other so industrial workers and their families didn't need to breath in toxic fumes while at home and the middle classes could bypass these things entirely. The difference between the US and, say, European cities is that most Europeans didn't have access to cars due to higher fuel prices and car taxes so they relied on public transport meaning cities used less space. Also, a lot of European cities are built in what were historically defensive landscapes (river crossings, valleys, hills, peninsulas) so they lacked available land to expand exponentially. It's not necessarily about having more respect for existing urban heritage. I've lived my entire life in Europe and work in conservation; generally people are indifferent until it's gone; the difference is that during this exact period we lacked the necessary resources to demolish our own urban spaces as much as the US did. US cities in most cases didn't have these restrictions so the car was able to define all urban planning after the war.
They were living in the moment. They wanted quick solutions to complex problems, which almost always creates larger problems later down the line and future generations are lumbered with the task of trying to solve them. It's what we saw with asbestos and PCBs and it's what we're seeing with plastic now.
As far as I can find, the city was dying before the changes occurred. Those with money moved to the suburbs after WWII. Major businesses soon followed and the city center started to decline. The city itself had some serious flooding issues and experienced multiple devastating floods in the early 20th Century. This helps explain why so many people left the city center when suburbia became an option. It also explains the expansive development for roads. The building of the I-91 also built the dikes that prevents flooding today. It seems the city leaders saw the writing on the wall and made radical changes in hopes of saving a city that didn't have much of a purpose anymore. It looks like it didn't work, but there probably wasn't anything that could actually save the city.
I work for The Hartford and lived in Hartford (in apartment on riverfront) from 2017-2021 (now work remotely in AZ); the city is a ghost town on the weekends (even Dunkin Donuts is closed) so you have to drive outside of city to do almost anything; I always had the best seats in the local theatre because usually I was the only one there; I’ve never been robbed (partly because I avoid going to certain places after dark) and my company itself SCARES all new employees about being outside after dark
what sucks is that the highways forces you to drive through hartford like we were gonna make stops there. hartford traffic is bad. no one wants to be around
Glad to hear you call out modernism. A generation of architects worshiped Corbusier and this is the result. Never been to Hartford but it’s hard to tell apart from North Korea.
Nothing wrong with modernism. But people need to learn to keep their hands off the older buildings and protect them. Create new building styles in a different zone that doesn't impact older buildings. That way you get a good yet respectful tapestry. Problem happens when people tear down a previous style to replace it with something new. Cities should protect their cultural heritage more. So much has been lost. What a shame.
@@Ekam-Sat It’s not just the style it’s the ideology of modernism that rejects what you admire in favour of brute functionalism. And there is everything wrong with the style. It is above all else boring- there is nothing to detain the eye, no joy, no flourish, no reference. Hence what has happened to Hartford, other US cities and ironically communist cities. I live in the UK where we had some modernism but nothing like the US and none since the 90s. Post modernism is far more diverse, much more interesting and a lot more popular. We also adapt many more older buildings thanks to much greater legal protection
@@jontalbot1 I hear you brother so I am upvoting your reply. But Ithink good 1950s modern architecture should not be put in the same basket as all the soulless creations that are called post-modern. There's many a good modern buildings that are actually good. To name a few. The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe and The Glass House by Phillip Johnson. Look up John Lautner or Richard Neutra. My goodness. All artworks. But they are all surrounded by nature thus not drawing away from nature but by complementing it. However. I believe the best buildings for city are neoclassical, art deco and the likes. Blessings.
My grandfather (who lives nearby in the suburbs) whenever I bring up how bad Hartford is, agrees, then says "But they keep developing these parking lots. Where am I going to park?!" I understand his perspective that the elderly may worry about further walks but that mentality is a big reason the city continues to decline and wither
@@Wideout4I'm a tradesman. I do a lot of work in Hartford. There's parking everywhere, but none of it is free. I'm always having to call my company's office to set me up with parking passes, or send in reimbursement claims for parking fees or tickets. Most of the parking lots are always at probably less than 20% capacity; rarely do I ever see it above that. Driving through the city and on the highways is a nightmare, though that's all of Connecticut; usually, I can clear a drive to Hartford from home in 45 minutes in the early morning, but I'm lucky if I can make it back home in an hour by the time I leave work early afternoon. Wild.
I went to high-school in Hartford. And you feel what the city used to be. I both love and weep for Hartford. The suburbs cut off the nose, then carved up the face of what once was the Paris of America. Hartford helped to motivate me into being an advocate for Urbanism
Hopefully more people are being logical and realizing that demographics are a large part of the collapse of city centers. With rampant crime and ghetto individuals, comes death
The people in charge who were generally white people brought this kind of city architecture unto themselves. Black people moved in because white people moved out and took their wealth with them. Its neither fault of any group, but rather individuals in charge. So please don't claim that this is the fault of black people, as their presence there is just a result of poor city planning.
The state of modern cities is the great national gaslighting. America is a relatively young country, but that’s not why we lack for great urbanism. You travel America LOOKING for America-you’ve seen it in pictures and movies-and it’s so hard to find. Because it’s gone. And no one’s parents or grandparents seemed to notice or care.
@@mickeygraeme2201 And it's because this country has become a place people don't care about and when push comes to shove they wouldn't be able to be bothered to defend it! Let the foreigners and foreign governments come in and take over for they can't possibly be any worse! (Unless they're Russians under Putin).
Here in Columbia SC, we have Boomers complaining about how downtown is no longer the retail and residential hub it used to be. They are completely oblivious that it their fault and that of their parents! They CHOSE to leave downtown for the new suburbs and shopping malls.
@@HenryDiggs-z3e Show me the America in a McDonald's drive-thru. See if you can panhandle a grain of the golden soul that blooms in those old photos of Hartford in some Seattle or Louisville or Colorado Springs gutter.
The exact same thing around Chicago. When that city was down in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the suburbs farthest from the city boomed and prospered. Later on Chicago began to successfully revitalize and make itself more attractive and competitive.
The Great Migration and desegregation is what triggered the inner city to become undesirable and led to white flight to the suburbs. You then had urban decay in these historical areas. Meanwhile, in order to facilitate commutes, create housing scarcity and cars necessary (making the city and suburbs too expensive for more blacks), cities and suburbs enacted zoning laws such as parking requirements, limits on mixed use, and height restrictions. Then combine that with the modernist and post-modernist ideology in architecture that rejected traditional and objective beauty, and you get what we see now. Hypothetically, even if now some big developers wanted now to buy up some land in the city and recreate the city how it used to be (which would be in very high demand), zoning and permitting laws would make that impossible. It is locked in legally.
Another wonderful video in this series. I am from Suburban Detroit, and did truly love where I grew up. I did always thing that Detroit itself was a sort of hollowed out shell of itself when I used to go. Growing up I did not consider this all that much but simply accepted it. Having lived in Boston for 4 years in college and now New York City for the last 3, I can't see myself moving back to a city like this. I do have some hope for the future though as I think a lot of younger people are understanding that our cities were once great and beautiful and that they can be again. We have lost so much and it is easy to be a bit angry frankly, but we need to channel this anger into creating more radical vision for the future of our cities. Saving our cities would do so much to revive this country.
I too am from suburban Detroit. The reason it is like this is because it is America’s most segregated city. My neighbors tell me awful stories of prejudice.
It's funny how 'urban renewal' was twisted into destroying urban areas in the US whereas it was used to enhance existing urban spaces in Europe. When urban renewal came to my city it meant preservation and enhancement of existing ex industrial and commercial structures and creative use of infill sites. Maybe its a matter of money. The US was rolling in cash in the post-war era. in Europe, we didn't have the money or the housing to bulldoze entire city centres in the 50s and 60s so by the time the US had made these mistakes we changed our approach to urban planning to one of preservation, enhancement and targeted expansion/denitrification. In this way a person in their 70s or 80s can still feel at home and recognize the city they grew up in.
Another explanation is we have less place to expend in europe. Urbanism in 60' in France was about building suburbia "pavillion de lotissement". But soon the road started to be crowned, parking impossible, and city center to suffer from drain of activity. And we were not only consuming agricultural land to build it. The view of famous paris area being transformed into a giant parking made everyone understood it's was not sustainable and change plan. Look picture "Quand paris n'était qu'un parking à ciel ouvert" (when paris was a open sky parking) to understand.
@@deztabilizer I had commented somewhere else on here that the challenges of having been established on easily defensible geographic and strategic locations during the middle ages usually prevented usually prevented a lot of European cities from expanding post war. A lot of European cities are built in valleys, on hills, river crossings and sheltered bays. These provide a natural limit to urban expansion due to restrictions on providing infrastructure and construction costs. US cities generally didn't have the same needs so could be build on open flat land enabling expansion which could only be limited by travel times.
@@Whatshisname346 That's a very interesting point. For the exemple I know in Paris, the circular highway was build on the old fortification. It create a psychological limit for the city, everything outside was "too far away" for rich family.
It's possible to have convenience without demolishing everything. If you somehow magically slashed NYC area rents by a half, living within walking distance next to everything is convenient, and it's pretty hard to say NYC is mostly parking lots
@@Demopans5990 I think 🤔 I meant convenience in the sense of pre-packaged food, goods and other items that are found on the shelves of all strip mall convenience stores and fast food eateries... these have made suburban/exurban sprawl possible along with their car obsessions ...
Born and raised in Hartford. Hartford is a very small city in area. There was absolutely no reason to run I-84 right through the heart of it. They raised the old Hartford High School to make room for it. It is the second oldest High School in the country and looked like it could have been an Ivy League school. My mom went there. I went to the replacement, a sterile looking place built in 1962. But hey, it did have a fallout shelter and I guess that was important at the time.
In fairness to Victoria, though, there still are a lot of historical buildings in the downtown core and lots of 1920s ish private houses from Vic West to Oak Bay and even a few in Saanich. But, yes, Blanshard is an ugly stroad. I volunteered at Point Ellis House for a bit and before, didn’t even know it was there! There I learned that industrial bit between the Bay St bridge and Douglas apparently was a whole neighbourhood of nice houses (maybe some more modest too?) but I think they started selling up even from the 20s onward to factories, etc? The one that really gets me here about car centric attitudes was the dismantling of the streetcar lines (six I think) that reached Saanich, Oak Bay and even as far as the naval base! Gone by the late 40s when cars/gas were affordable?
New Haven, CT has similar problems that were made worse by the construction of I-95 and I-91. As an example, the Wooster Square neighborhood of New Haven is lovely. However, due to its' proximity to the highways, the neighborhood suffers from a constant, underlying noise pollution. Probably the only reason that New Haven hasn't deteriorated as much as Hartford is Yale University. Yale is not blameless in its' relations with the city. The University doesn't contribute enough in taxes. New Haven real estate in New Haven is grossly overpriced because of Yale. But, the existence of Yale and its' medical facilities keeps New Haven from being another Hartford.
Sadly, while Whalley Avenue remained vibrant, Whitney Avenue was left to rot. It's been a long time since I was there, but that's certainly what it felt like a few years ago. My former company had its home office downtown (no longer, I think they're up in Meriden somewhere now), and I was in town at least once a month. The community actually stopped the CT-34 freeway from destroying the west end of New Haven. I'm figuring the wealthy areas around Edgewood Park rose up, but in the course of starting to build it, they gutted an entire section of downtown for the "Oak Street Connector".
Then that would def be a change. In the 80s-90s, Whitney (going north from Church St) went downhill quickly. You could walk out Whalley Ave for a while and there were restaurants, apartments, shops etc. Could be a lot different now as you mentioned.
How much is tuition at Yale? Do you want to raise taxes and make it even more unaffordable, and put students more deeply in debt just to go there? What about the patients that go to that medical center, isn't their hospital bill expensive enough? Do you want to raise taxes on them?
hope to see this series start up again soon. would love an upload about Kansas City. The aerial photo of the 'Kansas City Blitz' is the most powerful photo that exhibits the destruction of freeway building
Hartford was originally going to have one of the first beltways in the country when I-84 was being planned. But several and very different lobbies worked to change that. The first were the largest downtown retailers including Bill Savitt and more importantly Dorothy Auerbach the heir to G. Fox & Co., they wanted direct access to the downtown from 84 & 91. They other lobbies were early environmentalists & suburban residents of West Hartford Farmington and Simsbury that were not going to allow a highway to pass through. You can still see never used flyovers around the Westfarms Mall area.
Wow, will look that up. I do know that I84 for years actually stopped at a stoplight at the G.Fox store's parking garage. Courtesy of Auerbach influence.
I visited for work 10 years ago (from the UK). I didn't bother going out during the weekdays as no one was on the streets and it didn't look like anything was open. I spent my weekends in NY or Boston. So I find it interesting that it has a history. Thanks for sharing.
That comparison trivializes the Dresden tragedy-- tens of thousands burned to death in a firestorm and the loss of irreplaceable architectural treasures. The painstaking effort to reassemble/recreated some of the most notable ones only reminds one of the greater loss.
@@danataplin7933 I agree and it’s why I made the comparison. Dresden was utterly destroyed in 1945 only for it to be a more beautiful city 80 years later than most American cities. I blame the lazy generation before me for these errors. The lazy masses of American society have utterly destroyed a semblance of normalcy for normal people. Everywhere you go you are reminded why America is car centric and it’s the lazy unwashed masses
@@ianhomerpura8937 yea Germans are very good at rebuilding and making sure their architecture is effective and beautiful. Rebuilding in America is adding an extra lane to the highway so the obese masses can reach costco quicker. Makes me sick
@@danataplin7933 Well you know, if they didn't vote for Hitler and the Nazis in 1932, none of this would ever have happened, but they thought another World War would be fun and look what happened! A lot of people, who turned in their Jewish neighbors to the Gestapo and the SS so they could be shipped to death camps to be gassed and incinerated, got incinerated themselves and became piles of ashes along with their Jewish neighbors they turned over to the Nazis.
Great video. You mentioned Warsaw rebuilt of historical buildings after II WW. But the picture you are showing at 7:46 is a city center which was never rebuilt and is currently occupied by modern, high rise architecture (as shown). Yet, it is quite livable. Most of Warsaw is covered by huge apartment buildings according to ideas of Corbusier but these are also livable areas, very low crime, lots of public spaces, greenery, local businesses, etc. It is not only old architecture that makes cities nice place to live.
@@Dragon122hh True. In case of Warsaw it was not the matter of choice but a necessity. Milions did not have a roof over their head and huge apartment buildings straight from the building factory was the fastest way of ammending catastrophic situation. These buildings were meant to be used for 50 years and then replace but something better. Today these modern buildings are staying.
I have lived in Hartford now for 2 years and really you can see parts of what it use to be and it makes you want to go back and witness it for yourself.
Even back in the dirty times of the 1970s Hartford was way better than it is now. We used to go every weekend cause the drinking age was 18 & 21 in Massachusetts. It was a nice time and a lot of fun. They also had the best Rock Stations and live music clubs. Ahhh the good ole days.. Too bad what's happened over the years. Good Video 👍
The best they can come up with to revitalize the community is building ugly high end apartments next to the highway and a minor league baseball stadium for a team that already had one a few towns over rather then open usable space something. The last few beautiful old buildings are houses turned into insurance agencies
The thing about Connecticut, it is a great state... its just that Urban and Suburban life in the state are vastly different. Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Waterbury all are very down on their luck kinds of places. Connecticut is a beautiful state and I hope it can get better for all residents
for one most of Connecticuts urban places serve no function any more. Just like a coal town, remove the cotton mills and the winchester factory in new haven and the cities dry up. And two is a parasitic underclass that hurts all those cities from being redeveloped and they organize to keep decay entrenched.
@@mickeygraeme2201the parasitic underclass migrating from the south in the 50s and 60s is the harder part of the problem. Bring businesses back is do-able. Exorcising the demons…no one knows how to do that anymore.
For real. CT has forests, beaches, and rivers. There are world class museums and universities (both public and private). There is a lot of diversity of genuine coexistence. After all, MLK was inspired by his time in CT. A lot of haters in this comment section really have no idea what they’re talking about. The cities here are rough because they have been the victims of corporate and political greed along with fear and shame from without.
I grew up near Hartford and my father lived in the old Front St Italian neighborhood by the Connecticut river that is now I-91. It was replaced by the horrific constitution plaza; all the beautiful Main St stores such as G. Fox & Co.are gone - such needless destruction. Nearby New Britain, where I grew up, was known as the “Hardware City of the World” until the late 1960’s when it, too was destroyed by so called redevelopment. It went from being a thriving blue collar city to a shell of strip malls, crime and poverty. Thank you for your excellent video exposing the destruction of this historical city.
It’s so sad to see this. I live right outside Hartford and the city is one of zero personality. Roads and parking. They make frail attempts to revitalize it but without the history there’s nothing. All the riverside is highway which could be beautiful walkways like in Portland, Maine, and the city itself should be robust with history like Boston. But it’s not.
The increasing reliance on cars seems to be the worst thing that happened... Its so awful to see these beautiful cities be razed just to create ugly parking lots
Interesting story. I drive though Hartford and despite all the high ways and parking the city is still a bottle neck. I used to go occaisionally to the XL arena for hockey games, and basketball games, but the city seems devoid of any good reason for me to stick around. The Wadsworth Atheneum is nice, but there are few reasons to return. I like West Hartford. Since the state stated an income tax in the 1990's the insurance industry has moved out as well as a lot of other people. Hartford used to be the insurance capitol of the US.
I grew up in Hartford’s north end. It was a very mixed neighborhood then. We would walk to what we called downtown at least once a week, shopped, ate. Then in ‘69, the riots hit the city, and we moved to West Hartford for safety. We would still go downtown but no longer walked there. We would take the bus to the Aisle of Safety, which was a quaint unique Hartford bus top. Sadly that’s gone too. Then G,Fox was gone. Sage Allen, Grants, and all the other stores and shops disappeared too.
This was the paradox of 20th century urban "planning". Build freeways to speed residents between the city center and the neighborhoods (suburbs) where they live, but in the process tear down everything in the city center that people want to visit in the first place...For every instance of "American ingenuity", such as the invention of mass production and the automobile, we have at least two instances of equally prolific "American stupidity" such as hollowing out cities, and creating a system that destroys local production and requires everything be moved a thousand miles before it's delivered...Alex, why not do a short series on the cities that did it right, and the travails they encountered while trying to ward off this modernization disease?...Enjoy the series...
@@alexanderrotmensz I'm glad you're doing the 'rising cities' series. It's too easy for videos like this and particularly the comment sections to end up as a swamp of privileged nostalgia and declinism. Finding examples of ways out of this mess is much more important IMO.
Again, you're blaming highways. So why haven't other cities with highways cutting through them collapsed the same way we've seen in Hartford, New Haven, Rochester, Syracuse and other nightmares?
@@iamcase1245 The salient point was that freeways destroyed a lot of the organic and historic architecture that was present in these cities that would have been a draw for visitors, had they been left to restoration. That's not to say that there weren't other economic forces at work, but the sclerotic effect of these freeways bifurcating the core leaves them few options for rebirth. Freeways create a lot of "dead tissue" except for places that were designed around them. Even there, it's pretty dicey long-term...I have a suspicion he will address this in the coming series...
@@bartphlegar8212 Between the 1950s and 1990s Highways were a necessity and one way or another someone was going to pay for it. If you didnt build in the inner city which is where in the 1950s and 1960s was where the industrial centers were, then you were going to have to build in the suburbs where it would create noise pollution, vagrancy from travelers and all types of other insanity. Also where would fright trucks go? The suburbs? To then have to be unpacked and driven back down to the city anyway in smaller trucks? Also at this time lots of long-distance rail freight would unload in cities, what good would it do to unpack these trains 30 miles out in the suburbs? Today with remote work, more work being inter-driven and other factors highways will get less use but to say Hartford collapsed due to highways and parking lots is a massive reach and it leaves out 99% of the story.
I live in copenhagen, a city most people agree is a beautifull city. Not worldclass kinda beauty, but its defo worth a sightseeing - Hartford in the 50s kinda gives me the same vibe as cph. What a shame
im from connecticut, and trust me they use highways and parking lots to divide the downtown and the 'ghettos' that are literally blocks away from downtown. CT is one of the most closely segregated states its so weird the richest areas are 5 minute drives away from war zones. They pick and choose where to implement positive change for sure. Im from Meriden its like a 25 minute drive from hartford, and our whole downtown was destroyed by parking lots and garages and it's depressing to see old pictures and all the people on the street, all I wanted as a kid was to grow up in a place that feels like a community and many other kids long for that too
As a citizen of Hartford Connecticut, I would like to say you are right in so many ways, but to play Devil's Advocate for a bit here. 1.) Hartford is still a very walkable city, I walk around the city everyday to get to the gym, home, local little shops if I need to grab a couple things, etc. It has certainly become more car centric, but walking is certainly still a safe and often enjoyable option. 2.) Some of the photos you listed of lost historical structures have been replaced by other still existing historical structures, I feel if a building is to be torn down but is replaced by something more grand, that it is an improvement. I also don't hate the mid rise office buildings either, now would I like them to be the majority of structures, no not at all, but luckily they're the minority of structures across the city all in one fairly packed area. Side Notes: What you're 100% right about and I can't stand as I think it's personally a crime against the city IS TO REPLACE THESE STRUCTURES WITH A PARKING LOT! I understand parking is necessary, while saddened I can accept a parking garage here and there, if the parking garage is slightly decorated and has a floor of shops below keeping some life around, I'm likely perfectly fine with it, IF ITS A PARKING LOT HOWEVER, that is where I get very angry internally. Condense the parking into garages or into the basements of these structures (many of them do that) so we can save as much as possible. Some things will need to be torn down, but let's at least use the space efficiently to minimize what is lost and maximize the usage of the space. If I was mayor I would quite literally outlaw parking lots which sell their parking and are not more than five floors! XD 3.) Has the interstate system been a complete catastrophe to the United States economically, socially, environmentally and culturally? YES. (If you think the answer is no, please stop eating lead paint, it's not good for you). Has the interstate system led to a mass exodus of our cities leading to a decline in property value and the fiscal status of both the city and those who remain, yes. Are they likely here to stay, yes. :( But even though we're likely stuck with them in some form doesn't mean they can't be incorporated into our modern cities in a positive or at least in a nature of reclamation from what was stolen. Cities often have to deal with things which split them into different parts, only previously such things have been nature, more specifically bodies of water. Treat the highways like rivers. Here me out, I know this is long, but if you were to decrease the elevation of the highways in Hartford so that they were below ground like 84 is in some parts (just do it for the whole thing in the city), use concrete noise, side the walls with noise dampening structures, build bridges over these highways which can also act as on and off ramps and perhaps put a netting across the whole top so those who get over the barrier can't jump on down, I think you could have a city which can thrive with the highway. Much like the urban planning of yester-year where much of the industry is near the rivers, have the industry and offices near the highway, they'll likely benefit from it, and they're likely already close to it. The interstate system had catastrophic consequences, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon to meet the needs of both motor vehicles and the American dependence on them but also of our urban centers and those who live in them. Conclusion: Hartford has been hit hard and seen some great loss for sure, but Hartford hasn't been lost. In fact I'd argue that Hartford is ripe for massive reinvestment projects. It's difficult as it can't quite compete with NYC or Boston, but personally I feel with some good policy Hartford could become the greatest city in the tai-state area. How? Make it a city people can afford to live in with the perks of urban life (walkability, parks, street markets, etc) that also happens to be in the center of Connecticut's interstate system allowing those who live here quick and easy access to get out of the city when they need a rural escape to go pick some apples with friends. A city that is land wise so small, that it allows quick escape for fun trips and a quick return. Hartford could become a local and much better version of Portland Maine (sorry guys, I love Portland but I gotta represent my own lol). You could have the perks of NYC and Boston with some smart policy and investment here without the ridiculous cons of being too expensive and difficult to get out of/through for adventures outside. Idk, maybe I'm just autistic and love Hartford too much. Even 5 year old me dreamed of living here and I just spent my time watching a TH-cam video about it and ranting in the comments section about how Hartford could easily be the best city in the region. lmao If you read this, you might be autistic too, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
When americans visit normal european cities they are astounded but hundred years ago many american cities looked quite similar. What’s looking ’old’ in most european cities was build in the late 1800’s as there was a big urbanisation boom then and demand for a higher standed was enforced. Architecture going back to the middle ages or old only makes out a fraction in most european cities. Also many european cities have suffered from WW1 & 2 but still american cities manage to outperform them in devastation.
That is very true most of Central Paris,which Americans particularly venerate was re-built by Hausman in the late 19th century while medieval Paris was bulldozed for boulevards, and the Luffawaffe partied there while they went and bombed UK cities to dust.
Hartford and Connecticutt are special cases..the rich lived in the suburbs, the working class in the cities. Now that the machine tool industry, engineering and manufacturing industries are gone..only the poor live in the cities.
interesting point about the suburbs, but I have to say the machine tool, engineering and manufacturing industries are not gone. As a field service engineer in CNC machining for 8 years living in Hartford county, and now an engineer for a large aerospace company, CT still has a lot of these types of jobs, and companies are hiring...
excellent video, new subscriber. that being said, one must remember that the "urban renewal" movement of the 50s and 60s came about for a reason...all those magnificent walkable neighborhoods had become dark and dangerous slums over time.
What was done to America from the late 1950s through 1980s was a crime against humanity... the loss of architecture amd destruction of our cities and communities was absolutely criminal.
Do you want to live in a city that's 46% Hispanic , 36% black, and 15% white. Are you sending your kids to those "culturally enriched" public schools? Its called white flight and the crime was forced integration..
The truth is people don't want to live in cities. A city is where you live when you can't afford a home in the suburbs! You move up and you move out of the city and get yourself a nice house with a yard.
@@thomaskalbfus2005that's just not true... if the cities were nice people would love to live there... Americans are just used to their cities being dumps... if we had invested in our cities like Europe and not destroyed them it would be like there where everyone wants to live there and the suburbs are lame...plus, most American cities also have houses with yards...
@daveweiss5647 I live in a city, but it is not a city city, it has a population of about 20,000 people not the millions of New York City, which is usually what I think of when I think of a city. Really big cities have problems because too many people decided to live there.
The government of New York City has decided that it has better things to do than arrest people for petty larceny or vagrants. New York City is the Venue where they are trying to arrest Donald Trump to get him out of the presidential race, that is they have a political motivation to arrest him and they are trying to find something they can call a crime so they can have an excuse to arrest him, it is so Dukes of Hazzard! The people standing outside the court house cheered when the biased Jury found him guilty on 35 counts of whatever. So my take on this is that too many New York City residents don't want a presidential race that is competitive because most of them are immigrants from the third world and having a dictatorship for them is normally how they think a country should be run!
@@thomaskalbfus2005 You are correct about NYC (and basically every major American city) being hopelessly and criminally corrupt dumps... because they are one party incompetent corrupt governments that have run them into the ground... with good leadership they could be good places to live... but are not... it is a great American tragedy and a symptom of tue rotninfecting our country... you are also correct about the corrupt travesty that just took place their... this is no long a free or just country...
I live in the Hartford area. I grew up here and work in downtown Hartford. I try to explain to people that this city used to be a jewel, but few comprehend. This video presents that story better than I could ever explain. Thank you. I am going to share this publicly and with friends and family
Well, the motto was "Make way for the automobile." Who could have predicted that Hartford's destiny was that of a Welfare Colony.
@@MarlinWilliams-ts5ul ya. It’s been a disaster
After the 1970s Connecticut only prospers when rich New Yorkers are afraid to raise their kids in New York City. The mistake Hartford and Stanford made was that when tons of minorities left New York in 2000s with their new middle class dollars and tried to setup in Connecticut, Connecticut treated them like shit to the point thousands of them up and either moved to Providence, Boston or New York - taking an almost 20% drop in GDP with them. Making it hard for large multi-national companies to stay in places like New Haven and Hartford due to progressive new graduates not wanting to deal with CT's bullshit and just setting up in either NYC or Boston many even went to Providence - making Connecticut the worst hit state after the financial collapse and even after Covid their economy isn't keeping up with inflation.
This also contributed to Connecticut having one of the highest age groups in the country. What does that mean? Low rates of tech innovation, the #1 industry in the country right now. What sense does it make to open up a large technology company in Connecticut when no one under 40 wants to deal with people who are mentally stuck in the 1980s and who are going to call the cops anytime they see a minority in a luxury car (which was RAMPANT in the 2000s). Connecticut is fucked and it's not the fault of welfare or highways. Connecticut is the Long Island of New England and until it collapses it's not going to change.
Connecticut in 2024 produces nothing, but puts up every road block possible for outsiders to come in and make something out of the state. Massachusetts and Vermont both learned this lesson and they've been thriving because of it for almost 15 years now.
@@iamcase1245 idk about all that. Not denying any of it….ill add, imo, CT is set up to be a suburban based economy. Corporate business parks are spread out in the suburbs not in city centers. This definitely hurt during the 2000s and 2010s when young people wanted to live in vibrant urban areas. I think CT was set up well for COVID as more people wanted more personal living space. But, I agree the fundamentals aren’t there. Besides financial services and some defense manufacturing we don’t offer much
@@BrewsBrothersCT Look up the stats I mentioned, youtube wont let me post links or images but they're all online. I'm a New Yorker who contracted on-and-off all over Connecticut during the 2000s and early 2010s and saw it for myself. You'd go to a large office campus and half the contractors were from New York or Massachusetts and we were only being contracted because not only did Connecticut barely have any high-grade tech workers at the time, the young people that did graduate from Connecticut schools with high end skills were high tailing it to NYC, Boston, and even *Providence*.
The vast majority of the time when they would offer us permanent jobs we'd reject them because of the culture and no one wants to live in Manhattan but commute to Hartford for the rest of their lives. Also Boston wasn't THAT much more vibrant than any Connecticut city going back historically and Providence was a little sleepy city even in the early 2000s but they both adapted.
The sad thing for Americans to realize is how walkable their cities used to be 😨 The United States used to be a _world leader_ in public transport...
I feel like the only way I can convince my fellow Americans to go for public transit/passenger rail is by saying “we used to have the greatest in the world”; never underestimate how motivated by a sense of national superiority nearly every American can get.
But our government has been bought out by oil and automobile interests among others leading to suburban sprawl and the death of many of our cities
Try riding some public transport in the USA and see the diversity at work all around you, with diverse security guards that look on and do nothing
@@MichaelKnickersoh brother stop watching Fox News.
Something that made the country truly great in the past, yet most of the MAGA folks would say public transport is communism...
My daughter and I were driving through Hartford. I thought I'd stop to show her the Old State House. We parked ina garage nearby and walked to the State House Museum and it was closed in a Saturday, because when the office workers leave, Hartford is a ghost town. My daughter asked where all the people were. Nobody was outside walking. It was like a dystopian, post apocalyptic movie.
Lol😂
I used to live in both Downtown and the west end from 2015-2019. Downtown is an absolute ghost town on the weekends and after 630 on weekdays.
I live in the suburbs. I started working in Hartford in the late 70's. I always wondered what it looked like before most of it was bulldozed. The amount of office space has at least tripled since then. Most suburbanites won't go to Hartford at night anymore because of the gang/drug violence. My favorite spot was an original 1700's graveyard next to the Gold Building that couldn't be removed. It's inscription seems apt: "Death is a debt to Nature due, which I have paid, and so must you."
When we occasionally attend some event in Hartford we always walk around downtown with the kids, and always visit that graveyard.
That graveyard is now full of drug use
Oh my god. It's no wonder Americans feel less proud of their country than they used to. We had something to be proud of back then. The only part of Hartford worth caring about is reduced to a single street.
This is the result of black migration north.
Because people moved back into NYC.
Keep voting Democrat
@@WildsDreams45 Lol.. yes.. every empire falls, but almost none of them actually dismantle what was part of their ''golden age''. The US only cares about cars, not about functioning city districts or history. This is the sad thing, this is why everyone there should be mad at the thing that happened. Again: this doesn't happen on this scale in my country, even we've been past our ''golden age'' for centuries now.
Maybe not having to try to stay relevant, as the US dropped in democracy index, freedom index, so on, will eventually be a good thing- as a former global hegemony, doesn't have to invest as much into war as they used to. But lol, that's I think a thing the US will never acknowledge. Sad.
@@letheas6175dude you guys lost all your empires after starting the two largest wars in all of human history.
the other ones are depressing, this one is downright horrific. The loss of places, homes, neighborhoods, architecture, etc is just makes you kind of sick to your stomach. people lived there
You should see both Niagara Falls NY and Gary IN. Both in much worse shape.
they just moved to the suburbs, you'll find tons of country manor estates and well-kept suburbs the world would be envious of just outside the downtown. the city itself is just a shell because of altered tendencies in the population (they want land, privacy, etc.).
@@bartlett2335 Yes, my family came to the USA as Colonialists for the chance at obtaining land (a lot of it) and to eventually own something similar to the English country manors once occupied by Lords and Ladies. You don't get to have that living in a city.
@@bartlett2335Cities like Boston and Portland maine also have those suburbs without the same levels of decay and abandonment in the city center. They both have lost population and suffered loss buisiness but their city centers are thriving compared to Hartford.
What happened to them, were they destroyed in a nuclear explosion?
No, don’t finish this series please 😭. We need to see so many more - Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Syracuse, Atlanta. Heck, once upon a time even LA was great and had the largest light rail network.
You can see the history of other American cities on other YT channels.
But I think it’s good he stopped here or else it would get too depressing to make and watch.
Cincinnati is out!
And don’t worry. There will be a Season 2 soon enough
Yes please do more cities!
All those cities have one thing in common 😂
@@Shotgun_Only Bingo. I grew up in Flint. Completle savagery.
It’s insane how much space we devote to parking
It’s actually disgusting
Name a politician who promotes commuter rail service? No one does because citizens see trains as a terrible inconvenience.
Do you take the train to work?
@@SIRdonnybguilty No, why would I? they are inconvenient. The amount of rail infrastructure that would be needed for that to be feasible would make this video look like nothing. Public transit is really not an option for a lot of working people. I look at people I know personally, who own business that require motor vehicles, like a foundation repair company, or an HVAC installer (I own a lawn care business myself, and there really is no way around the fact that a truck is essential and can't simply be replaced by some form of public transit). There is just no way that any form of public transit could replace the convenience and freedom that an individual has with a car of his own, with which he can go anywhere, whenever he chooses.
@@NJHProductions512 This is my point: the video decries the ruin of Hartford by parking lots, but no one is willing to give up the convenience of wider roads and huge parking lots. So, if Hartford is reduced to a lot of pavement, no one should complain about the city's ugliness.
@@SIRdonnybguilty I think you can have the best of both worlds, it just requires good planning. For example, instead of having 4 blocks dedicated solely to parking, just use one and build a multi level parking garage.
As a CT resident who has only known the modern Hartford...I'm sad seeing what we've lost.
One thing that I've noticed about our culture is that it wasn't until recently that the general public has started to even acknowledge the past. I remember growing up as a kid that our culture looked upon the older generations as fools with outdated technology and outdated beliefs. Replacing the old with the new was seen as progress, but we were too arrogant to realize that our ancestors had wisdom that was worth learning from. If we've been building beauty and walkability since ancient times, is there not a reason for it? I remember one of my school teachers talking to our class about how outdated trains are because they're slower and the routes are predetermined. I don't even remember what grade I was in, but I just looked at the photos of old trains in our history book thinking that was such an obvious conclusion, not even realizing that we once boasted the greatest railways on Earth, even by today's standards. Something that should've been passed down us with great pride was looked down upon as "outdated" and reduced to mostly forgotten history. It infuriates me when people say that America is "too big" for rail when the entire continent was already fully connected by rail over a century ago. Please continue this series. We need more Americans to know just how much was truly stolen from them.
Well said. Thank you for such an amazing comment.
This series will be brought back soon. But I do think it is important to shed light on some other talking points such as cities that are doing things right, as well as discussing some of the debates I see people having in the comments section.
C.S. Lewis referred to this as chronological snobbery.
Great comment. I hope that America can go back to dense beautiful cities again. San Francisco is beautiful for that reason, which I think is a model design wise for great cities.
@@alexanderrotmenszim from europe but looking at things like this im coming to only one conclusion similiar to this comment
It's fact that americans tried to look very modern not caring about respect to the past and europeans tried to done the same but even communist countries decided to not go too far because of people nostalgia and respect to some buildings (for example they wanted to tear down half of Poznań old town for park but they realised that this is completly not paying off)
The biggest problem with Americans is their willful ignorance. If you explain all this stuff to them, they accuse you of wanting to take away their cars. This type of attitude is even taking hold in the UK now with people complaining every time a new cycle lane is built, making the argument that nobody uses them. Well, yeah, you won't see many people using them when you're zipping along at 30-40 mph in your car. If you got on a bike and used them, you'd see that other people do use them. You also get people over here complaining that there's nowhere to park their cars in towns and cities now. They accuse councils of taking away parking spaces, but never stop to think that the reason why they can't find a parking space may be due to the sheer amount of people who drive cars now compared to in the past (and when I say past, I'm only talking like 20 years ago as there's been a huge increase in the amount of cars on the road in this country since then), meaning all of the parking spaces have already been taken by other people in cars. With amount of cars on the road now, if councils decided to give every driver their own parking space, most of our public spaces would be transformed into huge parking lots, which is exactly what you guys in America are dealing with. I think our councils are actually making the right decision by constructing cycle lanes. It's the attitudes of most of the car driving public that's acting as a barrier to a happier, healthier society.
Man… watching any video or doing any research of American cities pre “Urban Renewal” era is just amazing. It’s almost unbelievable how much history, architecture, cityscape, culture, ways of life were destroyed.
Yes, we destroy the old for the new; or, we just let the old rot and decay until it falls down on its own, then we replace it with something new. We do that in small towns just as we do that in larger cities. Letting go of the past for the sake of progress has always been the way we do things in the USA. When we're not willing to let go of the past, we are chided.
@@laurie7689 More like we throw out the perfectly functional 'old' the moment something new and shiny comes along, even if it's worse than what we had before. Typical symptom of the throwaway, consumerist culture that we've created.
@@Hanstra Unfortunately, human progress has almost always been about replacing the old tried and tested ways with new learn as we go ways. I suppose that is what Human dreams and hopes prompt us to do. We tend to be a species that looks to the future while paying little attention to the past and present. We have a "The End Justifies The Means" mentality.
@@laurie7689 except Hartford declined in the 1950s which is why they built a highway through it since most people moved to the suburbs. Not every building is important. By your logic we should all be living like ancient Mesopotamians. You admire the modern city of Paris? Well Georges-Eugène Haussmann had to raze suburbs to the ground
🏀 people
A native of Hartford, I remember trips to the city in the early 1960s before all of the damage was done. Suburbs of West Hartford, East Hartford, Farmington, Avon, Canton, and Simsbury, and Bloomfield have sprung from the still-decaying city. Recent efforts to encourage the conversion of vacant office buildings into residential units offers hope that the downtown will be transformed.
I lived in Simsbury from 1999-2001. Was very nice back then. No idea about today, as I haven't really been back since
@@HedgeFundAnalystSimsbury hasn't changed drastically in the last twenty years. Not much at all, actually.
I grew up in Hartford area and worked and retired from prison system as a correctional officer. The amount of inmates from frog hollow, hartford, waterbury. new britain, willimantic, bristol, new haven, bridgeport was staggering. Hartford was beautiful in the early days, and I recall it...GFox and how pretty it was during Xmas, but now since all the highway development and the destruction of so many older buildings, it's a crime-riddled nest, as are many other cities. This isn't something new. This has been a systemic misappropriation of funds and tax dollars that were NEVER reinvested into these places and crooked Governors. Rowland, Weicker were horrible. Only Governor that did anything helpful was Ella Grosso. All the state police and correctional officers knew that Rowland was a wife batterer and the state police covered it up "allegedly" so he could become Chief.
I live just outside of Hartford, and took the bus into the city for school. I walk past most of the photographed locations in this video on a daily basis. Hartford is a city with a population of just over 100,000, while its metropolitan area clocks in at over a million. How many cities have a suburban population more than 10 times itself? The issue is that almost all the money that is generated in Hartford is done so through a select few insurance companies, and then taken out of the city into the suburbs (which are wealthy indeed) by the insurance workers. There is no night life in Hartford, downtown is a mixture of insurance professionals and homeless people, there is very little tourist attraction whatsoever… so many poor people suffering while wealthy professionals suck all the resources out of the city and leave… there’s nothing quite like it, I would encourage anyone to visit downtown Hartford to witness the stark contrast for themselves.
How right you are is sad.
what if people want to live in the suburbs instead of in the city
@@awepossum1059 Maybe more people would want to live in the cities if they weren't destroyed. Want to know why there are so many suburbs to begin with? Look up "White Flight".
Its metro area is so much higher because it is tiny in surface area.
@@awepossum1059 then they're fools.
This is a superb video about a shocking situation that few know about. It serves as such a warning to other cities! Many cities have deteriorated due to industry leaving, but this city was actively destroyed by people without a heart. Thank you.
Fifty years ago a nice American boy visited me while touring Europe. Really he was kind and generous. His hometown was Hartford.
Yep I lived in Hartford for many years and now live in West Hartford. Hartford is still making the mistakes of the past. CCMC (tax exempt children's hospital) is about to build another parking garage for a cool $40 million, in a neighborhood where car ownership rates are among the lowest in the country and childhood asthma rates are some of the highest in the region. The president of the Bushnell is fighting to prevent a massive bomb crater of a surface lot from being developed into a mix use neighborhood so his suburban customers can park for free (parking is included in ticket prices, who does that help again?). You flashed a photo of the Bushnell parking lot on a busy day, but 99% of the time it's just an empty lot. Hartford has great people but also a lot of problems.
My opinion is to just let the city municipality go bankrupt like Detroit. I highly doubt those new developments contribute enough in property tax to even pay for the maintenance 10 years down the line. Hell, some of those parking lots look run down already
Parking garages are good. They mean you can have fewer parking lots.
Everybody here complaining about the city while living in the burbs and driving everywhere. I wonder what is driving this demand for parking...
I grew up in CT. Everybody thinks they're progressive but they wouldn't dare live next to minorities in the city center. Nothing is going to change until the people do.
@@dylans8198 Yeah, but only if you actually get rid of the parking lots and do something useful with them instead
Facts
I've always meant to visit Hartford as it is about 2 hours away. Not now! What a shame. As one old time told me, "we spent the war years flattening beautiful European cities, then we came home and did it to ourselves."
I used to go to Hartford to see the beautiful Christmas display, but one year they decided that a projector of some snowflakes would suffice as a replacement. Unfortunately, prior to that, I'd have told you to visit just to see that.
Unintended consequences--We started the car culture and the longing for our own little patch of suburbia because we didn't know what we were losing. No one was far sighted enough to see that, in the tearing up of the inner cities to build the interstates and expressways to take us out of the city, we were leaving all our community support behind. Churches and museums got left behind as fast food and malls took over. We sacrificed history and beauty and resources and culture to the lure of individualism and consumerism. What is the life of the average suburb now, about 20 - 25 years? We shouldn't forget that suburbs eventually die too as people keep driving to the "newer and better" one.
Exactly, most older inner ring suburbs are in just as bad of shape as the central cities. The more prosperous folks flee to the lower density outer ring suburbs with their wide highways, huge yards and McMansions. The doughnut hole has greatly expanded to include the central cities and first ring suburbs entirely.
@@karenryder6317 The dutch had the foresight and gave up on following the US urban planning model. I'm pretty sure the US government had the foresight too, but who needs foresight when you get money from lobbyists?
@@stefaniliev7040 Britain has relatively recent come to this conclusion too, the car, the motorway and out of town malls don't really work in small Countries. After 60yrs though, its the public who are the ones who don't want the change their minds.
This is so heartbreaking. My mom grew up outside of Hartford and in the 40s and 50s when she was a girl, I am sure that "going into Hartford" was an interesting adventure, still. And for her parents, it was what they knew. Thanks for sharing this.
I hear ya. My parents used to hang out and walk around holyoke, MA. Now I'm scared to even DRIVE thru holyoke.
These pictures make it look better than it really was. Hartford wasn't really desirable at any point before the 30s. It's always been a no-go.
I can tell the narrator is from the west coast. Out there you say "The I-95" and "The I-84". Out here it's just "Don't take 95, hop on 287 over the Tappan Zee to 15 to 91 to 84 to The Mass Pike"
Isn't the tappen zee called something else now?
@@joekingsley7642the cuomo I believe
@@TheDartdouble05 I think that's it
@joekingsley7642 It will always be called the "Tappan Zee" or just the "Tap" even if it's unofficial. The "Gov.Mario Cuomo Bridge" has never taken hold and probably never will
@@TheDartdouble05 yes but to those of us in the tri-state, it will always be the tapan zee
I always knew something was wrong with this city, but this is somehow WORSE than anything I could have ever imagined. Thank you for making this.
Hartford isn’t alone in this urban malaise, New Haven did the exact same destructive urban renewal. My birthplace city of Niagara Falls NY did this exact same destructive urban renewal and now the city is an impoverished, violent crime infested garbage dump loaded with toxic industrial brownfields. Gary IN is another completely destroyed blue collar city that has completely empty and overgrown urban blocks. An empty street grid where neighborhoods once existed.
At least new kept a lot more stuff then Hartford
Almost all of it comes down to old laws put in place by automobile lobbies that required a parking spot for every person (not family, person) that could occupy a business, which required lots of parking when building a new business.
And the construction of the abomination that is 84, which needed a lot of prime land, since it cut literally through the center of Hartford. Meaning all the nice normal houses and the small businesses supporting them all demolished to build probably the worst 4-6mi stretch of road in the state. But a vitaly important one since it connects to so much of downtown and about half a dozen other important highways, literally 200 ft outside the borders of downtown.
Like every clearly visible problem currently in the area is from the presence of 84.
@@r.pres.4121 Truly depressing prospect. Hopefully, future generations will exercise an infinitely more discerning eye when it comes to urban historical preservation.
Unbelievable. I never understood the scale of what happened until your videos.
OMG, The city turned into a parking lot. 🙁🙁🙁
Try walking to the city from the parking lot. It's awful. I know from experience.
@@Synergiance Oh I don't even have to go to Hartford to have to feel that unfortunate experience every time I have to do so.
@@Synergiance Clearly building more and more parking lots was just a patch up.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 oooo bop bop bop bop
This video was fantastic dude. You've managed to sum up what I've tried to explain to people over days and weeks into a 9 minute video. Your editing is great, and the visuals are devastating.
Please keep making this series.
The back to back pics of old Hartford & new Hartford legit hurt me a little, really really sad to see what we did to our cities
this is so saddening. its actually crazy how little of the original hartford is left.
Almost in tears. Every once in a while I catch a whisper of old Hartford when I’m there. But this video encapsulates it well. Thank you.
breaks my heart as a new englander
Same, I love that once beautiful city and the stuff that remains in it like Wadsworth Atheneum and the Mark Twain house.
Breaks my heart as an old englander, too
My partner's american, and there is a lot I love about the United States, the open country, wildnerness, the opportunities to hunt, camp, hike, the old country towns, the traditional architecture with clapboard, the intrinsic, inextricable links between our countries and our ancestry too
However, this corporate disregard for history, communities bith pat and present and culture by corporate america is frankly disgusting, and tyrannical, and is what I (and my partner, as well as I believe any other good, truly patriotic american should) despise about the US, how greed rules nearly everything, and before somewhat someone starts, no, I'm not anticapitalist, you've got the wrong idea, I believe in capitlism but you got to protect and favor culture and community over solely generating capital, otherwise society starts to fail, as we r currently witnessing - there's no social glue, people turn against each other as theyre made to feel theyve nothing in common, what is the point of generating billions if there's no society in which to enjoy such wealth?
Or is this final point too insightful for the average wall street pig trougher?
I work in Hartford and it’s such a strange feeling walking/driving around there. It feels both like the city has so much potential and that something amazing used to be there, especially when you look at Pratt St and see that it’s really the only place where the city seems to have any sort of life. Thanks for this video, I had no idea what used to be here.
I’m just glad that they kept the old Colt building in Hartford, you can’t miss that crazy blue dome!
Putting a picture of Robert Moses where the VO says "urban planners that only care about themselves" is absolutely based and correct.
Actually, he only cared about car culture. The railings along the West Side highway, which he designed in NYC, are at exactly the right height so that when you are seated at any of the
many public benches along the highway, your view of the Hudson River (on the other side of the highway) is completely obscured. 😢
Live near Hartford and this is devastating to see. My dad, who grew up in nearby New Britain (which has a similar story to Hartford and would be an excellent addition to the series), tells me a similar story about how the city he grew up in was torn down for highways and reduced to the poor, concrete-laden city it is now.
New Britian still has The Eastside and Krakovia, so there are some bright spots. Amato's is gone, though.
would you have preferred that he stayed and you had the opportunity to attend the awesome public school system there? Nothing beats immersing one self in diversity and the cultural enrichment it offers school age children. Its sad he moved you to the suburbs and deprived you of these experiences.
@@mikeborrelli193 He moved well before I was born. Also I did some of my student teaching in New Britain so got a taste of the diversity there, and that was very eye-opening, but NB has a reputation for being a very poor school system now. (Had some field experience at one of their middle schools and it was very rough, but my student teaching at NBHS was really good.)
Born in Hartford grew up in New Britain and lived there until I retired. I saw how both cities were devastated by highways and corruption and lack of planning. I now live in New Mexico and miss the multi-ethnic food and culture back home. And the proximity to the ocean. Oh well.
I grew up in Hartford and still live there, however I and four of my siblings attended private parochial schools. We're glad we missed out on the diversity. @@mikeborrelli193
My hometown of Rockville, CT followed the same pattern on a smaller scale. Urban renewal saw the elimination of a large part of a thriving business district, which was replaced by a strip mall. The remaining business eventually closed or move to a new center near the highway. The one fortunate thing was that many of the old factories and houses were preserved and/or designated as historical, so at least the place still has character.
I love it here in Rockville
New England Civil War museum operates every weekend in the GAR hall.
This video could have been made about any of Connecticut's "major" cities: Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, or New Haven. All of them were thriving and bustling cities until the last half of the 20th Century. Connecticut made a big bet on fostering a suburban, car-oriented culture and for 50-odd years, that thrived. CT had the ultimate suburbs in Greenwich, Westport, Darien, New Canaan, etc. Now that GE abandoned its headquarters in Fairfield, CT lost one of its economic anchors and its bet on the suburbs is being paid off with stagnant income, shrinking population, and no major cultural center. I feel very sad about my former home.
It's unbelievable that such a wealthy state right next to NY and Boston has terrible cities across the board
Bridgeport is horrid. At least New Haven (with all its issues) has Yale. Sadly they gutted almost the entire west and south sides of the areas surrounding the New Haven green in favor of brutalist designs and parking lots. And the coliseum is one of the ugliest structures I've ever seen. But hey, parking.
@@glennhavinoviski8128 New Haven is in the process of remedying a decent amount of that right now. Lots of new housing and mixed use developments going up in those areas + more bike infrastructure on certain streets. Still lots of people complaining about a lack of parking though. Better than nothing.
@@kevincosgrove4954 That's probably why its wealthy, the lack of big cities where homeless people can live and beg on the street thus dragging down the average income. New York City makes New York poorer with all those homeless people, slums, and crime ridden neighborhoods.
@@glennhavinoviski8128 Well if you send your child to Yale, do you want him or her getting mugged on the city streets?
crazy how it puts things in perspective. we really sold our soul to the auto industry as a society. all this beautiful architecture, gone for the sake of parking garages and highways
Thank you for this; I grew up 10 miles away across the river. It's heartbreaking seeing the broken, divided city I've known my whole life as it once was: vibrant and alive.
Thank you so much for these videos. It's important to keep this history around for people who say "America is too spread out for transit."
No, we had cities just like Europe did for hundreds of years and we chose to destroy them in favor of sprawl. There's nothing natural about this outcome, and had we not bulldozed so much of our core city centers, we might be able to talk about Hartford like we talk about Delft, or Utrecht, a smaller city near a megacity that has lots of charm without being overwhelming.
One thing people fail to realize is that the railroads were owned by robber barons who were in the business of making money first, moving goods and people second. No one had the stomach for bailing out the evil railroaders when expansions or improvements were necessary. Most people were happy to see them fail. They had a nice shiny new car which took them directly to and from their nice shiny new homes in the suburbs. What could go wrong?
Excellent work. Very sad but personally reaffirming as I've been thinking along these lines for years. Glad I'm not alone.
25 years ago my partner and I visited Hartford on a trip down the East Coast and I remarked to him, "This is a fifth-rate town." Now I know why - three fourths of the city was made blighted, torn down and replaced with parking lots and highways! 😳
Beyond sad.
From my eyes as a New Yorker, Hartford is a city? Doesn't even look like one lol and I grew up in the more surburban parts of NYC
@@Demopans5990 Was a city.
@@Demopans5990 It used to be until it was demolished. I guess that's what the video is trying to explain.
Both Hartford and New Haven wanted to become slumless cities by demolishing as much of their old housing stock and old commercial buildings as humanly possible. However urban renewal and the interstates failed both cities and now they are two dead empty urban cores. At least both Bridgeport and Waterbury still have a significant amount of their old urban cores.
Fun fact: there is only 1 TRAIN YOU CAN TAKE IN HARTFORD. The train station literally only has one track now and it only goes between New Haven and Springfield MA
Yes, and most of what used to be regional rail lines has been torn up, turned into trails etc.
i went to college in hartford and honestly love the city, there's still so much to see and do if you walk past 15 parking lots to find it. it's unbelievable how much denser and more exciting it could be. theres also a lot to say about the crazy transit situation these days with CT Rail and the Fast track
I moved to Hartford twice. Once in the late 80's and then again in the early 2000's for work. Being from the South, the first thing I noticed was how rude the people were - even at my place of employment. Co-workers would openly "mock" my accent to my face and behind my back. Also, it was just natural for me to say "Good Morning" to people when I arrived at work. They would either walk right by me or just stare. I lived in East Hartford and would take the bus home. The same 20 people would be at that bus stop in the morning and evening, and no one talked to each other - dead silence. How sad. When I first moved to Hartford - someone told me "The people who work in Hartford don't live there and the people who live in Hartford don't work." Totally true! I will never go back.
That's most of the Northeast. We're all pessimistic Catholics
I recently moved to Boston from NYC and I'm surprised how unfriendly New Englanders are compared to New Yorkers.
New Englanders are just pretentious posers.
I grew up in Connecticut. People are cold. Try getting a girlfriend.
I grew up in CT and I agree!
I used to work in downtown Hartford. I knew they had done some bad urban renewal but I had no idea of the scale of it. Its tragic. I'm truly shocked. Although, one good reason to go to downtown Hartford is the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which is a fantastic art museum.
Who else is about to cry?
I recommend Albany... it was a top 10 city until 1850 and now utterly lifeless. They built a massive concrete office complex called the "Empire State Plaza" right in the heart of the city, destroying its soul.
Hmm. My memory is that Albany (and Troy and Schenectady--my home town) were already destroyed and Govenor Nelson Rockefeller was actually trying to spruce up and encourage some reinvestment into the state's capital city and its architecture when that plaza was built.
@@karenryder6317 The area around the Governor's Mansion was a combination of working-class neighborhoods that did not impress visitors to the capital of (what was) the US's most populous state. Also, Rocky thought that this was the only solution to keep state employees downtown, which would be a net benefit to the city. Unfortunately, no one wanted to walk a few blocks outside and patronize local businesses; they preferred to take the elevator down to their cars and get on the highways out of Albany.after work. I don't know whether it was worth destroying 98 acres of the city just to make Albany look a little "bigger and better"; that question is for minds greater than mine.
Beautiful capital building upstaged by commie brutalist architecture
. . . Albany- that Plaza . . . looks Hitlerian, or Stalinist, in Character . . . it tells the Common Cirizen- "Bow Down, to your Overlords- you, are worth, exactly . . . Nothing" . . .
. . . one, literally has to Descend into Darkness . . . to Ascend, to the offices of NYS Lawmakers . . .
. . . and one wonders, why The Power Elite there . . . has so little regard, for The Ordinary Person, Family, or Community . . .
Makes you wonder if there was an old society that was essentially conquered in a way
Here in Finland we have a thing called "Turun tauti" (Disease of Turku). It refers to the demolition of old historical architecture for new construction. It happened mostly in Turku in the 60's and 70's but also in other cities to some extent. People are sad about it to this day as many beautiful buildings were dismantled.
This however blows my mind. Leveling entire cities for parking lots and freeways... At least for us there was a new building replacing the old.
I find it hard to believe Finland destroys so many of its old bldgs. Here in UK we thought the nordic nations, like Finland, were careful and loving of their culture and especially environment.
Nobody wastes space quite like us Americans do. It’s in our cultural DNA to destroy what is already here and to replace it with something useful in the short-term. This video is incredible
I was born and raised in Connecticut and have always known in my adult life that Connecticut is the “forgotten ugly middle child”stuck between Boston and New York. Your video proves me right. The politics here suck.
Connecticut is a suburban state, what do you want?
@@thomaskalbfus2005for you to eat your own ass
That is the perfect description! I’m stealing it. At least we’ve got Springfield, Mass nearby 😂😂😂
@@AnthonyMercado-1988 the best mayor NYC ever had was Rudi Giuliani, and they disbarred him!
@@thomaskalbfus2005 Hopefully, he'll be locked up soon too.
I moved from Hartfords suburbs to the city proper because I recognized its beauty. The downtown was almost entirely replaced, but much of the surrounding city fabric remains. There are still beautiful, historic buildings that need to be saved. There is a small force in Hartford fighting the good fight. Carey Shea is one of the leaders of that movement. She has worked tirelessly to save a house owned by the local church who wanted to turn it into a parking lot. She also saved a historic building owned by Hartford Hospital who wanted to tear it down for seemingly no reason. But there are still places that fall to the hand of foolish people. One instance was a historic chapel owned by a neighboring synagogue. We could not convince them not to tear it down despite being built by women in the 1880s.
gee, i wonder why the synagogue wanted a chapel torn down...
@@hello-rq8kf It was a jewish chapel...
@@hello-rq8kf😅😅
Maybe, in the not too distant future, a group of forward thinking civic minded people will restore this once proud city to its rightful state by taking for their inspiration the transformation that has occurred in Dresden Germany (which you did mention). Dresden, a bombed out shell of a city after WWII, has been and still is being restored block by block based on the photographs and documents still in existence. Nothing short of a miracle to see. Thanks for this illuminating series and the thought and care taken in producing each upload.
Truman's post WWII aide was given to rebuild German cities and then, ironically, the US very soon thereafter began tearing up our own cities with "urban renewal (and redlining)" and interstates/super-expressways! Good ole Robert Moses had a fanatical vision that most of us bought into.
Hartford 400 was supposed to be the answer here - basically a big dig style answer. But it keeps getting shot down in the state Senate because it lacks bipartisan support, even though Dems have a supermajority in state government
@@jenniferperry87 I agree with you. Too many self-interests in play and zero-vision for the common good.
I live 10 minutes north of Hartford via I-84. My dad worked in insurance there my whole life, I've been there many times and enjoy history. Last week, I was going to the lovely improv theatre, SeaTea, with my parents and went "Wait... That's the old statehouse. There's literally nothing sacred in this city. I've seen small Massachusetts towns protect their history better than we've treated our state capital down here.
Umm. 84 runs east and west.
@@lifeinaditch In general yes, but interstates can go diagonally and curve a lot. I live north east of hartford. I-95 runs north/south yet runs almost parallel to the CT shoreline at some areas aka west/east
I like the picture of the Hartford Civic Center! When I was 17 in 1981 I drove down 91 from Mass to see AC/DC there, it was awesome! Even back in 81 there was no big attraction to going to downtown Hartford (or most any other US city for that matter) to shop or eat. The US has been in suburbia mode for decades because people don’t like being crammed into annoying and small places.
I've lived near Hartford most of my life. Most of the wealth had left for the suburbs a long time ago. The construction of Interstate 84 destroyed a thriving neighborhood downtown. While I-91 did little damage, the use of the waterfront property has been used mostly for conerts and a long walking trail. Hartford also is a small city land size wise and due to the many government buildings there, doesn't get much tax dollars to their coffers,
Government buildings, hospitals, universities, nonprofits, and brownfield sites. None pay taxes.
Providence has similar issues with taxes. They've managed to get the colleges to pay something in replacement, but they keep having to threaten for more, as Brown in particular keeps buying more land and buildings.
The city’s doom loop started long after I-91 and i-84 were built. The lack of a tax base, combined with crime and poor quality schools led to extreme white flight to the burbs in the 1970’s. There was somewhat of a revival in the 1980’s, but consolidation in the banking and insurance industries drastically reduced white collar employment. The few companies that were left decamped to the burbs, where it’s safer and more convenient. There’s really no reason for Hartford to exist anymore.
@@wallyballou7417 Or was it the reverse? Perhaps it was the car culture and "white flight" that lead to poorer, crime-ridden cities?
I see this debate all the time...both are true and none is wrong. I am pretty it can be described as a feedback loop where both factors contributed to each other.
Yet another great and important video. The dystopia and ugliness was not always the norm and the more that know the better!
I really wonder what the folks in the mid-20th century thought they were going to accomplish with these plans, vs. what actually happened.
For many of them they won the war and the building of these new suburbs was seen as a way to escape the crowded and dirty cities. The idea initially was people who owned homes could have the space for their own lawns and gardens.
The problem is that homemaker generations disappeared, the cute suburban houses became ugly prefab mcmansions, the suburban street went from trees and beautiful fence work to boring and desolate homes on an empty field.
But boomers entering the workforce, the rising prices of automobiles, the loss of third spaces contributed greatly towards this.
Their plan was efficiency for car circulation.
At the time urban planning Orthodoxy all over the world took a very strict view of land use zoning; an area for industrial, an area residential, an area for retail and an area for office space. These were separated mainly because faster transport enabled people to travel from one area to the other so industrial workers and their families didn't need to breath in toxic fumes while at home and the middle classes could bypass these things entirely.
The difference between the US and, say, European cities is that most Europeans didn't have access to cars due to higher fuel prices and car taxes so they relied on public transport meaning cities used less space. Also, a lot of European cities are built in what were historically defensive landscapes (river crossings, valleys, hills, peninsulas) so they lacked available land to expand exponentially.
It's not necessarily about having more respect for existing urban heritage. I've lived my entire life in Europe and work in conservation; generally people are indifferent until it's gone; the difference is that during this exact period we lacked the necessary resources to demolish our own urban spaces as much as the US did.
US cities in most cases didn't have these restrictions so the car was able to define all urban planning after the war.
They were living in the moment. They wanted quick solutions to complex problems, which almost always creates larger problems later down the line and future generations are lumbered with the task of trying to solve them. It's what we saw with asbestos and PCBs and it's what we're seeing with plastic now.
As far as I can find, the city was dying before the changes occurred. Those with money moved to the suburbs after WWII. Major businesses soon followed and the city center started to decline.
The city itself had some serious flooding issues and experienced multiple devastating floods in the early 20th Century. This helps explain why so many people left the city center when suburbia became an option. It also explains the expansive development for roads. The building of the I-91 also built the dikes that prevents flooding today.
It seems the city leaders saw the writing on the wall and made radical changes in hopes of saving a city that didn't have much of a purpose anymore. It looks like it didn't work, but there probably wasn't anything that could actually save the city.
I work for The Hartford and lived in Hartford (in apartment on riverfront) from 2017-2021 (now work remotely in AZ); the city is a ghost town on the weekends (even Dunkin Donuts is closed) so you have to drive outside of city to do almost anything; I always had the best seats in the local theatre because usually I was the only one there; I’ve never been robbed (partly because I avoid going to certain places after dark) and my company itself SCARES all new employees about being outside after dark
what sucks is that the highways forces you to drive through hartford like we were gonna make stops there. hartford traffic is bad. no one wants to be around
Glad to hear you call out modernism. A generation of architects worshiped Corbusier and this is the result. Never been to Hartford but it’s hard to tell apart from North Korea.
Nothing wrong with modernism. But people need to learn to keep their hands off the older buildings and protect them. Create new building styles in a different zone that doesn't impact older buildings. That way you get a good yet respectful tapestry. Problem happens when people tear down a previous style to replace it with something new. Cities should protect their cultural heritage more. So much has been lost. What a shame.
It looks nothing like North Korea 😂
@@TerpeneScorcher Have a look at a video of Pyongyang. The same wide highways and bland modernist buildings
@@Ekam-Sat It’s not just the style it’s the ideology of modernism that rejects what you admire in favour of brute functionalism. And there is everything wrong with the style. It is above all else boring- there is nothing to detain the eye, no joy, no flourish, no reference. Hence what has happened to Hartford, other US cities and ironically communist cities. I live in the UK where we had some modernism but nothing like the US and none since the 90s. Post modernism is far more diverse, much more interesting and a lot more popular. We also adapt many more older buildings thanks to much greater legal protection
@@jontalbot1 I hear you brother so I am upvoting your reply. But Ithink good 1950s modern architecture should not be put in the same basket as all the soulless creations that are called post-modern. There's many a good modern buildings that are actually good. To name a few. The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe and The Glass House by Phillip Johnson. Look up John Lautner or Richard Neutra. My goodness. All artworks. But they are all surrounded by nature thus not drawing away from nature but by complementing it. However. I believe the best buildings for city are neoclassical, art deco and the likes. Blessings.
Oof. And I bet people in Hartford still complain about parking, despite the city now seemingly being made entirely of parking lots and garages
Probably cost insanely high with aggressive parking enforcement holding it hostage
My grandfather (who lives nearby in the suburbs) whenever I bring up how bad Hartford is, agrees, then says "But they keep developing these parking lots. Where am I going to park?!" I understand his perspective that the elderly may worry about further walks but that mentality is a big reason the city continues to decline and wither
From Hartford, it’s really easy tbh
@@Wideout4I'm a tradesman. I do a lot of work in Hartford. There's parking everywhere, but none of it is free. I'm always having to call my company's office to set me up with parking passes, or send in reimbursement claims for parking fees or tickets. Most of the parking lots are always at probably less than 20% capacity; rarely do I ever see it above that. Driving through the city and on the highways is a nightmare, though that's all of Connecticut; usually, I can clear a drive to Hartford from home in 45 minutes in the early morning, but I'm lucky if I can make it back home in an hour by the time I leave work early afternoon. Wild.
Funny there is so much traffic around Hartford on 84 and 91, not to many actually going there , just around it.
I went to high-school in Hartford. And you feel what the city used to be. I both love and weep for Hartford. The suburbs cut off the nose, then carved up the face of what once was the Paris of America. Hartford helped to motivate me into being an advocate for Urbanism
Mid 20th Century: Basically 95+% White
2019: 36% White
42% Black
Hopefully more people are being logical and realizing that demographics are a large part of the collapse of city centers. With rampant crime and ghetto individuals, comes death
The people in charge who were generally white people brought this kind of city architecture unto themselves. Black people moved in because white people moved out and took their wealth with them. Its neither fault of any group, but rather individuals in charge. So please don't claim that this is the fault of black people, as their presence there is just a result of poor city planning.
What are you implying?
The "all car" policy really did hurt cities...
The state of modern cities is the great national gaslighting. America is a relatively young country, but that’s not why we lack for great urbanism.
You travel America LOOKING for America-you’ve seen it in pictures and movies-and it’s so hard to find. Because it’s gone. And no one’s parents or grandparents seemed to notice or care.
There are still some Americans left but there are less and less every year.
@@mickeygraeme2201 And it's because this country has become a place people don't care about and when push comes to shove they wouldn't be able to be bothered to defend it! Let the foreigners and foreign governments come in and take over for they can't possibly be any worse! (Unless they're Russians under Putin).
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! YOU'RE WRONG!!!
Here in Columbia SC, we have Boomers complaining about how downtown is no longer the retail and residential hub it used to be. They are completely oblivious that it their fault and that of their parents! They CHOSE to leave downtown for the new suburbs and shopping malls.
@@HenryDiggs-z3e Show me the America in a McDonald's drive-thru. See if you can panhandle a grain of the golden soul that blooms in those old photos of Hartford in some Seattle or Louisville or Colorado Springs gutter.
The CT suburbs prospered when NYC was down in the 70s and 80s. NYC's revival has drawn businesses and residents back downtown away from the 'burbs.
The exact same thing around Chicago. When that city was down in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the suburbs farthest from the city boomed and prospered. Later on Chicago began to successfully revitalize and make itself more attractive and competitive.
NYC is on what appears to be a downturn that will take a while to get out from. Their downturn might help you all again!
@@adamrad2220 Then why is it so expensive?
@@AxelQC Thats the point, people will be priced out and move to cheaper areas.
@@adamrad2220 bad news man
ALL OF the USA is in a downturn now.
As a Hartford native; thanks for making this video.
This guy does not even have 8000 subscribers yet already has multiple bangers that passed the 50 and in two cases even 100k views. Fantastic stuff.
The Great Migration and desegregation is what triggered the inner city to become undesirable and led to white flight to the suburbs. You then had urban decay in these historical areas. Meanwhile, in order to facilitate commutes, create housing scarcity and cars necessary (making the city and suburbs too expensive for more blacks), cities and suburbs enacted zoning laws such as parking requirements, limits on mixed use, and height restrictions. Then combine that with the modernist and post-modernist ideology in architecture that rejected traditional and objective beauty, and you get what we see now.
Hypothetically, even if now some big developers wanted now to buy up some land in the city and recreate the city how it used to be (which would be in very high demand), zoning and permitting laws would make that impossible. It is locked in legally.
Another wonderful video in this series. I am from Suburban Detroit, and did truly love where I grew up. I did always thing that Detroit itself was a sort of hollowed out shell of itself when I used to go. Growing up I did not consider this all that much but simply accepted it. Having lived in Boston for 4 years in college and now New York City for the last 3, I can't see myself moving back to a city like this. I do have some hope for the future though as I think a lot of younger people are understanding that our cities were once great and beautiful and that they can be again. We have lost so much and it is easy to be a bit angry frankly, but we need to channel this anger into creating more radical vision for the future of our cities. Saving our cities would do so much to revive this country.
Make Detroit Great Again!
I too am from suburban Detroit. The reason it is like this is because it is America’s most segregated city. My neighbors tell me awful stories of prejudice.
@@sieteochoThat would require an end to segregation in the metro area; less people moving northward to as far north as sanilac county now
It's funny how 'urban renewal' was twisted into destroying urban areas in the US whereas it was used to enhance existing urban spaces in Europe. When urban renewal came to my city it meant preservation and enhancement of existing ex industrial and commercial structures and creative use of infill sites.
Maybe its a matter of money. The US was rolling in cash in the post-war era. in Europe, we didn't have the money or the housing to bulldoze entire city centres in the 50s and 60s so by the time the US had made these mistakes we changed our approach to urban planning to one of preservation, enhancement and targeted expansion/denitrification. In this way a person in their 70s or 80s can still feel at home and recognize the city they grew up in.
Another explanation is we have less place to expend in europe. Urbanism in 60' in France was about building suburbia "pavillion de lotissement". But soon the road started to be crowned, parking impossible, and city center to suffer from drain of activity. And we were not only consuming agricultural land to build it.
The view of famous paris area being transformed into a giant parking made everyone understood it's was not sustainable and change plan. Look picture "Quand paris n'était qu'un parking à ciel ouvert" (when paris was a open sky parking) to understand.
@@deztabilizer I had commented somewhere else on here that the challenges of having been established on easily defensible geographic and strategic locations during the middle ages usually prevented usually prevented a lot of European cities from expanding post war.
A lot of European cities are built in valleys, on hills, river crossings and sheltered bays. These provide a natural limit to urban expansion due to restrictions on providing infrastructure and construction costs.
US cities generally didn't have the same needs so could be build on open flat land enabling expansion which could only be limited by travel times.
@@Whatshisname346 That's a very interesting point.
For the exemple I know in Paris, the circular highway was build on the old fortification. It create a psychological limit for the city, everything outside was "too far away" for rich family.
This, in part, is a manifestation of stupid, apathetic consumerism and our appalling need for convenience in all things ... 😔
It's possible to have convenience without demolishing everything. If you somehow magically slashed NYC area rents by a half, living within walking distance next to everything is convenient, and it's pretty hard to say NYC is mostly parking lots
@@Demopans5990 I think 🤔 I meant convenience in the sense of pre-packaged food, goods and other items that are found on the shelves of all strip mall convenience stores and fast food eateries... these have made suburban/exurban sprawl possible along with their car obsessions ...
Would you rather spend your time shopping or looking for a place to park?
@@thomaskalbfus2005 Park ? Don't have to. Live in the city. Public transportation. Or walk. Ride a bike. It's wonderful !
@thomasb.smithjr.8401 much better to ride a bike in the countryside on quiet residential roads without a lot of traffic.
Born and raised in Hartford.
Hartford is a very small city in area. There was absolutely no reason to run I-84 right through the heart of it.
They raised the old Hartford High School to make room for it. It is the second oldest High School in the country and looked like it could have been an Ivy League school.
My mom went there. I went to the replacement, a sterile looking place built in 1962. But hey, it did have a fallout shelter and I guess that was important at the time.
Hartford was great back in the late 50s and 60s. Our dentist was there. Lots of great shops and movie theatres.Great to go around Christmas time.
Well done. It's not just the US. Here in Victoria BC, Blanshard "Street" is a monstrous, six-lane limited access semi-freeway.
In fairness to Victoria, though, there still are a lot of historical buildings in the downtown core and lots of 1920s ish private houses from Vic West to Oak Bay and even a few in Saanich. But, yes, Blanshard is an ugly stroad. I volunteered at Point Ellis House for a bit and before, didn’t even know it was there! There I learned that industrial bit between the Bay St bridge and Douglas apparently was a whole neighbourhood of nice houses (maybe some more modest too?) but I think they started selling up even from the 20s onward to factories, etc? The one that really gets me here about car centric attitudes was the dismantling of the streetcar lines (six I think) that reached Saanich, Oak Bay and even as far as the naval base! Gone by the late 40s when cars/gas were affordable?
So Canada's not perfect!
New Haven, CT has similar problems that were made worse by the construction of I-95 and I-91. As an example, the Wooster Square neighborhood of New Haven is lovely. However, due to its' proximity to the highways, the neighborhood suffers from a constant, underlying noise pollution. Probably the only reason that New Haven hasn't deteriorated as much as Hartford is Yale University. Yale is not blameless in its' relations with the city. The University doesn't contribute enough in taxes. New Haven real estate in New Haven is grossly overpriced because of Yale. But, the existence of Yale and its' medical facilities keeps New Haven from being another Hartford.
Sadly, while Whalley Avenue remained vibrant, Whitney Avenue was left to rot. It's been a long time since I was there, but that's certainly what it felt like a few years ago. My former company had its home office downtown (no longer, I think they're up in Meriden somewhere now), and I was in town at least once a month. The community actually stopped the CT-34 freeway from destroying the west end of New Haven. I'm figuring the wealthy areas around Edgewood Park rose up, but in the course of starting to build it, they gutted an entire section of downtown for the "Oak Street Connector".
@@glennhavinoviski8128 are you getting the streets mixed up? Whitney is in much better shape than Whalley these days.
Then that would def be a change. In the 80s-90s, Whitney (going north from Church St) went downhill quickly. You could walk out Whalley Ave for a while and there were restaurants, apartments, shops etc. Could be a lot different now as you mentioned.
How much is tuition at Yale? Do you want to raise taxes and make it even more unaffordable, and put students more deeply in debt just to go there? What about the patients that go to that medical center, isn't their hospital bill expensive enough? Do you want to raise taxes on them?
With an endowment of over $40 billion, does the tuition really need to be $80,000 a year?
hope to see this series start up
again soon. would love an upload about Kansas City. The aerial photo of the 'Kansas City Blitz' is the most powerful photo that exhibits the destruction of freeway building
Hartford was originally going to have one of the first beltways in the country when I-84 was being planned. But several and very different lobbies worked to change that. The first were the largest downtown retailers including Bill Savitt and more importantly Dorothy Auerbach the heir to G. Fox & Co., they wanted direct access to the downtown from 84 & 91. They other lobbies were early environmentalists & suburban residents of West Hartford Farmington and Simsbury that were not going to allow a highway to pass through. You can still see never used flyovers around the Westfarms Mall area.
Wow, will look that up. I do know that I84 for years actually stopped at a stoplight at the G.Fox store's parking garage. Courtesy of Auerbach influence.
Not Dorothy, her name was Beatrice Fox Auerbach.
I visited for work 10 years ago (from the UK). I didn't bother going out during the weekdays as no one was on the streets and it didn't look like anything was open. I spent my weekends in NY or Boston. So I find it interesting that it has a history. Thanks for sharing.
Compare Dresden in 1945 to Hartford in 1945 then do so today… truly horrifying
Dresden is actually rebuilding everything. The parking lot in front of their rathaus (city hall) is now being re-densified.
That comparison trivializes the Dresden tragedy-- tens of thousands burned to death in a firestorm and the loss of irreplaceable architectural treasures. The painstaking effort to reassemble/recreated some of the most notable ones only reminds one of the greater loss.
@@danataplin7933 I agree and it’s why I made the comparison. Dresden was utterly destroyed in 1945 only for it to be a more beautiful city 80 years later than most American cities. I blame the lazy generation before me for these errors. The lazy masses of American society have utterly destroyed a semblance of normalcy for normal people. Everywhere you go you are reminded why America is car centric and it’s the lazy unwashed masses
@@ianhomerpura8937 yea Germans are very good at rebuilding and making sure their architecture is effective and beautiful. Rebuilding in America is adding an extra lane to the highway so the obese masses can reach costco quicker. Makes me sick
@@danataplin7933 Well you know, if they didn't vote for Hitler and the Nazis in 1932, none of this would ever have happened, but they thought another World War would be fun and look what happened!
A lot of people, who turned in their Jewish neighbors to the Gestapo and the SS so they could be shipped to death camps to be gassed and incinerated, got incinerated themselves and became piles of ashes along with their Jewish neighbors they turned over to the Nazis.
Great video. You mentioned Warsaw rebuilt of historical buildings after II WW. But the picture you are showing at 7:46 is a city center which was never rebuilt and is currently occupied by modern, high rise architecture (as shown). Yet, it is quite livable. Most of Warsaw is covered by huge apartment buildings according to ideas of Corbusier but these are also livable areas, very low crime, lots of public spaces, greenery, local businesses, etc. It is not only old architecture that makes cities nice place to live.
@@Dragon122hh True. In case of Warsaw it was not the matter of choice but a necessity. Milions did not have a roof over their head and huge apartment buildings straight from the building factory was the fastest way of ammending catastrophic situation. These buildings were meant to be used for 50 years and then replace but something better. Today these modern buildings are staying.
Just wanted to say i'm a huge fan of these videos, keep up the good work!
The landscapes here are absolutely breathtaking, with nature's beauty at every turn
I have lived in Hartford now for 2 years and really you can see parts of what it use to be and it makes you want to go back and witness it for yourself.
Even back in the dirty times of the 1970s Hartford was way better than it is now. We used to go every weekend cause the drinking age was 18 & 21 in Massachusetts. It was a nice time and a lot of fun. They also had the best Rock Stations and live music clubs. Ahhh the good ole days.. Too bad what's happened over the years. Good Video 👍
The best they can come up with to revitalize the community is building ugly high end apartments next to the highway and a minor league baseball stadium for a team that already had one a few towns over rather then open usable space something. The last few beautiful old buildings are houses turned into insurance agencies
The thing about Connecticut, it is a great state... its just that Urban and Suburban life in the state are vastly different. Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Waterbury all are very down on their luck kinds of places. Connecticut is a beautiful state and I hope it can get better for all residents
for one most of Connecticuts urban places serve no function any more. Just like a coal town, remove the cotton mills and the winchester factory in new haven and the cities dry up. And two is a parasitic underclass that hurts all those cities from being redeveloped and they organize to keep decay entrenched.
@@mickeygraeme2201the parasitic underclass migrating from the south in the 50s and 60s is the harder part of the problem. Bring businesses back is do-able. Exorcising the demons…no one knows how to do that anymore.
@@mickeygraeme2201my comment in agreement has been censored.
For real. CT has forests, beaches, and rivers. There are world class museums and universities (both public and private). There is a lot of diversity of genuine coexistence. After all, MLK was inspired by his time in CT. A lot of haters in this comment section really have no idea what they’re talking about.
The cities here are rough because they have been the victims of corporate and political greed along with fear and shame from without.
Went to college in Hartford. We avoided leaving campus and going into the city as much as possible. I never knew… this is heartbreaking.
I grew up near Hartford and my father lived in the old Front St Italian neighborhood by the Connecticut river that is now I-91. It was replaced by the horrific constitution plaza; all the beautiful Main St stores such as G. Fox & Co.are gone - such needless destruction. Nearby New Britain, where I grew up, was known as the “Hardware City of the World” until the late 1960’s when it, too was destroyed by so called redevelopment. It went from being a thriving blue collar city to a shell of strip malls, crime and poverty. Thank you for your excellent video exposing the destruction of this historical city.
It’s so sad to see this. I live right outside Hartford and the city is one of zero personality. Roads and parking. They make frail attempts to revitalize it but without the history there’s nothing. All the riverside is highway which could be beautiful walkways like in Portland, Maine, and the city itself should be robust with history like Boston. But it’s not.
Yup. It's telling that the de facto entertainment and dining district of Hartford is in West Hartford.
There is a lot of black people in Hartford too, surprised to not hear that mentioned
To lighten its burden, NYC once offered "dependents" one-way tickets to CT cities.
The increasing reliance on cars seems to be the worst thing that happened... Its so awful to see these beautiful cities be razed just to create ugly parking lots
Interesting story. I drive though Hartford and despite all the high ways and parking the city is still a bottle neck. I used to go occaisionally to the XL arena for hockey games, and basketball games, but the city seems devoid of any good reason for me to stick around. The Wadsworth Atheneum is nice, but there are few reasons to return. I like West Hartford. Since the state stated an income tax in the 1990's the insurance industry has moved out as well as a lot of other people. Hartford used to be the insurance capitol of the US.
I grew up in Hartford’s north end. It was a very mixed neighborhood then. We would walk to what we called downtown at least once a week, shopped, ate. Then in ‘69, the riots hit the city, and we moved to West Hartford for safety. We would still go downtown but no longer walked there. We would take the bus to the Aisle of Safety, which was a quaint unique Hartford bus top. Sadly that’s gone too. Then G,Fox was gone. Sage Allen, Grants, and all the other stores and shops disappeared too.
This was the paradox of 20th century urban "planning". Build freeways to speed residents between the city center and the neighborhoods (suburbs) where they live, but in the process tear down everything in the city center that people want to visit in the first place...For every instance of "American ingenuity", such as the invention of mass production and the automobile, we have at least two instances of equally prolific "American stupidity" such as hollowing out cities, and creating a system that destroys local production and requires everything be moved a thousand miles before it's delivered...Alex, why not do a short series on the cities that did it right, and the travails they encountered while trying to ward off this modernization disease?...Enjoy the series...
Next video will be on “Americas Rising Cities” that are doing things right!
@@alexanderrotmensz I'm glad you're doing the 'rising cities' series. It's too easy for videos like this and particularly the comment sections to end up as a swamp of privileged nostalgia and declinism. Finding examples of ways out of this mess is much more important IMO.
Again, you're blaming highways. So why haven't other cities with highways cutting through them collapsed the same way we've seen in Hartford, New Haven, Rochester, Syracuse and other nightmares?
@@iamcase1245 The salient point was that freeways destroyed a lot of the organic and historic architecture that was present in these cities that would have been a draw for visitors, had they been left to restoration. That's not to say that there weren't other economic forces at work, but the sclerotic effect of these freeways bifurcating the core leaves them few options for rebirth. Freeways create a lot of "dead tissue" except for places that were designed around them. Even there, it's pretty dicey long-term...I have a suspicion he will address this in the coming series...
@@bartphlegar8212 Between the 1950s and 1990s Highways were a necessity and one way or another someone was going to pay for it. If you didnt build in the inner city which is where in the 1950s and 1960s was where the industrial centers were, then you were going to have to build in the suburbs where it would create noise pollution, vagrancy from travelers and all types of other insanity. Also where would fright trucks go? The suburbs? To then have to be unpacked and driven back down to the city anyway in smaller trucks? Also at this time lots of long-distance rail freight would unload in cities, what good would it do to unpack these trains 30 miles out in the suburbs?
Today with remote work, more work being inter-driven and other factors highways will get less use but to say Hartford collapsed due to highways and parking lots is a massive reach and it leaves out 99% of the story.
I live in copenhagen, a city most people agree is a beautifull city. Not worldclass kinda beauty, but its defo worth a sightseeing -
Hartford in the 50s kinda gives me the same vibe as cph.
What a shame
2:44 this is outrageous
im from connecticut, and trust me they use highways and parking lots to divide the downtown and the 'ghettos' that are literally blocks away from downtown. CT is one of the most closely segregated states its so weird the richest areas are 5 minute drives away from war zones. They pick and choose where to implement positive change for sure. Im from Meriden its like a 25 minute drive from hartford, and our whole downtown was destroyed by parking lots and garages and it's depressing to see old pictures and all the people on the street, all I wanted as a kid was to grow up in a place that feels like a community and many other kids long for that too
Beautiful piano piece for this video.
As a citizen of Hartford Connecticut, I would like to say you are right in so many ways, but to play Devil's Advocate for a bit here.
1.) Hartford is still a very walkable city, I walk around the city everyday to get to the gym, home, local little shops if I need to grab a couple things, etc. It has certainly become more car centric, but walking is certainly still a safe and often enjoyable option.
2.) Some of the photos you listed of lost historical structures have been replaced by other still existing historical structures, I feel if a building is to be torn down but is replaced by something more grand, that it is an improvement. I also don't hate the mid rise office buildings either, now would I like them to be the majority of structures, no not at all, but luckily they're the minority of structures across the city all in one fairly packed area.
Side Notes: What you're 100% right about and I can't stand as I think it's personally a crime against the city IS TO REPLACE THESE STRUCTURES WITH A PARKING LOT! I understand parking is necessary, while saddened I can accept a parking garage here and there, if the parking garage is slightly decorated and has a floor of shops below keeping some life around, I'm likely perfectly fine with it, IF ITS A PARKING LOT HOWEVER, that is where I get very angry internally. Condense the parking into garages or into the basements of these structures (many of them do that) so we can save as much as possible. Some things will need to be torn down, but let's at least use the space efficiently to minimize what is lost and maximize the usage of the space. If I was mayor I would quite literally outlaw parking lots which sell their parking and are not more than five floors! XD
3.) Has the interstate system been a complete catastrophe to the United States economically, socially, environmentally and culturally? YES. (If you think the answer is no, please stop eating lead paint, it's not good for you). Has the interstate system led to a mass exodus of our cities leading to a decline in property value and the fiscal status of both the city and those who remain, yes. Are they likely here to stay, yes. :(
But even though we're likely stuck with them in some form doesn't mean they can't be incorporated into our modern cities in a positive or at least in a nature of reclamation from what was stolen. Cities often have to deal with things which split them into different parts, only previously such things have been nature, more specifically bodies of water. Treat the highways like rivers.
Here me out, I know this is long, but if you were to decrease the elevation of the highways in Hartford so that they were below ground like 84 is in some parts (just do it for the whole thing in the city), use concrete noise, side the walls with noise dampening structures, build bridges over these highways which can also act as on and off ramps and perhaps put a netting across the whole top so those who get over the barrier can't jump on down, I think you could have a city which can thrive with the highway. Much like the urban planning of yester-year where much of the industry is near the rivers, have the industry and offices near the highway, they'll likely benefit from it, and they're likely already close to it.
The interstate system had catastrophic consequences, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon to meet the needs of both motor vehicles and the American dependence on them but also of our urban centers and those who live in them.
Conclusion: Hartford has been hit hard and seen some great loss for sure, but Hartford hasn't been lost. In fact I'd argue that Hartford is ripe for massive reinvestment projects. It's difficult as it can't quite compete with NYC or Boston, but personally I feel with some good policy Hartford could become the greatest city in the tai-state area.
How? Make it a city people can afford to live in with the perks of urban life (walkability, parks, street markets, etc) that also happens to be in the center of Connecticut's interstate system allowing those who live here quick and easy access to get out of the city when they need a rural escape to go pick some apples with friends. A city that is land wise so small, that it allows quick escape for fun trips and a quick return. Hartford could become a local and much better version of Portland Maine (sorry guys, I love Portland but I gotta represent my own lol).
You could have the perks of NYC and Boston with some smart policy and investment here without the ridiculous cons of being too expensive and difficult to get out of/through for adventures outside. Idk, maybe I'm just autistic and love Hartford too much. Even 5 year old me dreamed of living here and I just spent my time watching a TH-cam video about it and ranting in the comments section about how Hartford could easily be the best city in the region. lmao
If you read this, you might be autistic too, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
When americans visit normal european cities they are astounded but hundred years ago many american cities looked quite similar.
What’s looking ’old’ in most european cities was build in the late 1800’s as there was a big urbanisation boom then and demand for a higher standed was enforced. Architecture going back to the middle ages or old only makes out a fraction in most european cities.
Also many european cities have suffered from WW1 & 2 but still american cities manage to outperform them in devastation.
That is very true most of Central Paris,which Americans particularly venerate was re-built by Hausman in the late 19th century while medieval Paris was bulldozed for boulevards, and the Luffawaffe partied there while they went and bombed UK cities to dust.
Hartford and Connecticutt are special cases..the rich lived in the suburbs, the working class in the cities. Now that the machine tool industry, engineering and manufacturing industries are gone..only the poor live in the cities.
interesting point about the suburbs, but I have to say the machine tool, engineering and manufacturing industries are not gone. As a field service engineer in CNC machining for 8 years living in Hartford county, and now an engineer for a large aerospace company, CT still has a lot of these types of jobs, and companies are hiring...
excellent video, new subscriber.
that being said, one must remember that the "urban renewal" movement of the 50s and 60s came about for a reason...all those magnificent walkable neighborhoods had become dark and dangerous slums over time.
I was not prepared for this to hit me as hard as it did. Almost in tears, man. We’ve lost so much.