The Hartford Courant was founded in 1764. In 1817, a new newspaper came to town. For 159 years, until 1976, Hartford was something that has become increasingly rare in the 21st century: a two-newspaper town.
The Hartford Times was headquartered in an elegant Beaux-Arts building on Prospect Street. Today, as that building is being converted into a new Hartford campus for UConn, the Hartford Public Library is paying homage to the Hartford Times with an exhibit in the third-floor ArtWalk gallery.
“We want this exhibit to welcome University of Connecticut students, staff and faculty, to help them better understand what that building means, and to honor the people who worked there,” said Brenda Miller, executive director of Hartford Public Library and Hartford History Center.
The History Center’s collections make up the bulk of “Hartford Times: The Newspaper & The City,” which features photographs of people working at the Times and photographs by Times photographers.
The Times was founded on Jan. 1, 1817, as a weekly, by Frederick Dunton Bolles and John Milton Niles. It became a daily in 1841. A traditionally afternoon paper, the Times converted to tabloid format and moved to mornings in 1976, in an attempt to better compete with The Courant. The attempt was unsuccessful and the paper folded on Oct. 20, 1976.
Photographs dating from 1900 to 1976 show linotype operators, printing press operators, reporters, editors, paperboys and papergirls. Technologies used to put out the paper also are highlighted, such as printing presses, halftone plates and stereotypes. Community outreach programs started by the Times also are featured, including the Little League team, the annual Carol Sing and the kids’ summer camp that today is run by Channel 3.
The Times was a popular gathering place for political events. John F. Kennedy made a speech from the building’s portico the day before he was elected president, and Lyndon Johnson spoke from the same spot years later. In pre-TV days, election results were projected onto a huge screen hung up across the entrance and bulletins from WWII were posted on the outdoor walls.
Longtime Hartford residents will enjoy the exhibit as an opportunity to maybe identify people in the photos taken by Times photographers. Who is that pretty parade queen, riding in a convertible in 1959, a tiara in her beehive hairdo? Who are those kids’ campers on the bus, and those boys on the Little League team? Who are those people at the Vietnam War protest in 1973? Most of all, who is that boy who posed for a 1962 promotional photo, standing in front of a row of houses, with a bag slung over his shoulder reading “The Hartford Times: You Can Take It From Me!”?
The exhibit will be up until Sept. 30. The library is at 500 Main St. hplct.org.
