I Miss The Old Hartford, CT, Downtown Business, Entertainment, And Shopping District

You know, the one killed by Urban Renewal, and the suburban shopping malls.

In the last post, I reminisced about downtown Unionville, CT. The center of Unionville, was about two miles away, from my childhood home. We lived in a typical 1950s-1960s Levittown-style housing development, called the Highlands. Two miles is about a mile and three quarters too long for what I consider walkability.

Downtown Unionville had just about everything that working class families needed. There were two department stores that sold clothing. Dubow’s Department Store, was a small mom and pop store, that sold primarily work clothes for folks that worked in the then existing factories, that lined the Farmington River. They did sell Stride Rite shoes, and my mother was a stickler for both my sister and me, to wear only Stride Rite shoes, while our feet were developing. The other one, Myrtle Mills, did sell clothing, but my mother didn’t like what they offered. The only other option, was heading into downtown Hartford.

Main Street was the main shopping and entertainment district of Hartford. It had the usual hustle and bustle of any such district. There were people all over the place on the sidewalks, and crossing the street to get to the businesses on the other side. Main Street had several department stores on both sides of the street. There was our usual destination, G Fox & Co. Next door to Fox’s as it was known, was Brown Tomson. Next to that, was Sage Allen. Both stores catered to a more upper middle class clientele, so they were pretty much out of our price range. Across the street, was E. J. Korvette’s, which catered to a more working class clientele. There were also several small restaurants, the Planter’s Peanut Shop, with the wonderful smells of roasting peanuts, and Sagan’s Cafeteria.

Mom liked G. Fox, so that’s where we went. She had also worked there before I was born (It was called my parents saving up the money for a 20% down payment on a house). She still knew some of the long-term employees, who would advise her when things were going on sale. The first day of the sale, there we were. Most of the time, we were buying school clothes. Back then, schools had dress codes: For boys, shirt had to have a collar, dress or casual slacks, dress or casual shoes, no jeans, no shorts, no tennis shoes or sneakers; for girls, dresses or skirt with a collared blouse, closed toe dress or casual shoes, no pants, shorts or jeans, and no tennis shoes. Fox’s had everything we needed. They also had in stock, all the uniform requirements, for all the private and religious schools in the state.

Fox’s also had a lunch counter style restaurant, and a formal sit down restaurant called the Connecticut Room. It was my first experience in a dining room that had cloth napkins, and you were expected to act appropriately. I learned in which order silverware was used at a fairly early age. Besides the water glass, the other two stemmed glasses that had a slightly different shape, would be filled when I “was old enough.”

There was basically only one other option. That option was driving to a strip shopping center at the other end of town, just over the West Hartford line. That shopping center had a Sears store. Sears catered to a typical middle of the road, middle class family. We would occasionally go there rather than going all the way into Hartford. It also had a lunch counter-style restaurant. My dad liked their coffee, so we would swing by there, if we happened to be at that end of town. He stopped liking their coffee, when it went from 15 cents to 20 cents. Dad said that it was highway robbery. He used to say, “Soon coffee will be a dollar a cup.” He never went to Starbucks, and paid five bucks for something he never would have been able to pronounce.

The West Farms Mall opened in 1974 across the street from the strip shopping center, with the Sears. It wasn’t good for Sears. Malls became the new rage. They were springing up everywhere.

G. Fox, was no longer privately owned, with the owner, Mrs. Auerbach, living in an apartment on the top floor of the store. It had been sold. It now had corporate ownership, and had an anchor store in the mall. Over a few years time, G. Fox started having anchor stores in other malls in Connecticut. The suburban malls killed the downtown urban shopping districts. Brown Tomson went out of business, with Fox’s downtown store acquiring the building for a few years, before it closed. Sage Allen and Korvette’s went out of business. Fox’s was sold to the May Company in 1965, with Mrs. Auerbach receiving a large amount of money, and a substantial portfolio of May Company stock. She passed away in 1968.

The West Farms Mall store went from being a G. Fox & Co. store to becoming a Filene’s for a few years, and eventually became a Macy’s. The mall is still there, and Macy’s is still there. There is also a J. C. Penney and Nordstrom’s, and a whole lot of smaller stores.

The Sears across the street is gone. Hartford’s downtown business and shopping district, gone. All those old movie palaces, gone. All those beautiful old theaters, complete with balconies, were torn down, when Hartford went through Urban Renewal, just like Unionville did. From an urbanist perspective, it was a disaster. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,” became “If it isn’t broken, fix it until it is.”

Guess what? Downtown Harford is still broken.