The History Press

Early nineteenth-century illustrations of Hartford, Connecticut, show church steeples towering over the Victorian homes and brownstone facades of businesses around them. The modern skyline of the town has lost many of these elegant steeples and their quaint and smaller neighbors. Banks have yielded to newer banks, and organizations like the YMCA are now parking lots. In the 1960s, Constitution Plaza replaced an entire neighborhood on Hartford's east side. The city has evolved in the name of progress, allowing treasured buildings to pass into history. Those buildings that survive have been repurposed--the Old State House, built in 1796, is one of the oldest and has found new life as a museum. Yet the memory of these bygone landmarks and scenes has not been lost. Historian Daniel Sterner recalls the lost face of downtown and preserves the historic landmarks that still remain with this nostalgic exploration of Hartford's structural evolution.

With the advent of the railroad in 1849, North Williston changed from a small collection of
farms to a thriving economic center in Chittenden County. Transportation access spurred industries such as Smith Wright's cold storage plant, a butter tub factory and a gristmill. The general store, with the telephone switchboard and the post office, served as the community's central gathering place during the village's prosperity. Richard H. Allen has drawn on a wide variety of sources to capture the essence of this era, and perhaps most enchanting are the words of North Williston residents who recall the time before rail service declined and the village all but disappeared.