New Listings on the National Register: Apartments and Textile Mills

            Two sites recently added to Connecticut’s National Register listings illustrate the growth in the scale and complexity of residential and industrial development in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Ambassador Apartments, Hartford. Completed in 1921, this building was constructed during an important decade in Hartford’s residential development, when the city was in transition from single-family dwellings to apartment complexes. The 128-unit building on Farmington Avenue was constructed for developer Nicolo Carabillo. Originally called the Hotel St. Nicholas (it was renamed in 1925), the building was to be Carabillo’s crowning achievement: when completed it featured garages for the tenants’ automobiles and services that included barber, manicuring, and tailor shops. The Hartford Courant described the dining room as “spacious, well designed, decorated and lighted, [accommodating] more than 300 diners, and still [leaving] room for dancing.”

            The building’s elegant Italian Renaissance design, the work of the Hartford firm of Berenson & Moses, featured a symmetrical façade, low-pitched roof, wide eaves supported by decorative brackets, and carefully balanced ornamental features such as the iron balconies and the use of both arched and bracketed window enframements. 

            The Ambassador exemplified a boom in apartment construction in the Asylum Hill neighborhood, driven by the influx of workers that moved into the neighborhood following the arrival of Aetna Life and several other insurance companies. The apartment boom lasted until about 1927, when real estate agents began to claim that excessive apartment development and increased accessibility to single-family housing in the suburbs had created a surplus.

Although constructed as a luxury apartment building in an upper-class neighborhood, the Ambassador lost its luster as the neighborhood declined in the mid- to late 20^th century. In 1976 it was purchased by Aetna Insurance Group, which cited the need to provide housing for its workers and protect its office complex. Aetna undertook a complete renovation of the Ambassador; after 25 years of ownership, the company sold the building in 1999.

—adapted from the nomination, by Nick Kraus, Heritage Consulting Group

William Clark Company Thread Mill, Pawcatuck. Constructed in two stages (1892 and 1899) by the Clark Thread Company of Trenton, New Jersey, the Clark Thread Mill represents the textile industry that played an important role in transforming eastern Connecticut in the period 1850-1930, giving rise to mill villages and large manufacturing towns, an increase in population, and greater ethnic diversity. Throughout the region, ever-larger mills were built to produce cotton, woolen, and silk goods. The first mills were started by local entrepreneurs and were powered in whole or in part by fast-moving rivers and streams. Later, as in the case of the Clark Thread Mill, steam power predominated wherever coal could be economically brought in by rail or water, and the capital to finance these ventures increasingly came from out-of-state sources.

In the 20^th century, many of Connecticut’s textile mills were acquired by oligopolies that were national or international in scope; the Clark Thread Mill became one of the holdings of the American Thread Company in 1901. American Thread operated the mill until the late 1930s, at which time local investors bought the property. It continued in use for thread production for a time but by 1962 had been converted to light industry and storage.

            The Clark mill also typifies the industrial architecture of the period. In the late 19^th century, to meet the expectations of fire-insurance providers, a standard form of textile mill emerged, characterized by masonry construction,  internal framing using massive timber members, long and narrow proportions, flat roofs, and wide windows.

            The mill was severely damaged by the Hurricane of 1938, which blew off half the top story. Instead of rebuilding, the owners simply decked over the third story as a roof and enclosed the remainder of the fourth story with frame construction. The hurricane also damaged some of the subsidiary buildings on the site: the roof monitor of the former power house and the third story of the storehouse were both blown off and never rebuilt.

            The Clark Thread Mill is currently slated for conversion to residential use by POKO Management Corporation of Port Chester, New York. POKO hopes to use federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits in the conversion. In December 2008 the company also gave a preservation easement on Mill 1 to the Connecticut Trust.

—adapted from the National Register nomination, by Bruce Clouette, Archaeological and Historical Services, Inc.