Dan Antion

Buckingham Square Too

Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.

I want to begin with a message to Thursday Doors participants. I have added a feature to the link extract so that I can make the Sunday Recap a little more interesting. By attaching hashtags to the link (URL) you place in your comment, you can inform readers of the Sunday Recap of some keywords that describe your post. The same kind of words you might use as tags. The feature is in its infancy, so there are a few requirements. They are listed below:

Hashtags must be appended to your link and the resulting string must be contiguous. Example https://nofacilities.com/2022/02/17/buckingham-square-district/#Hartford#Connecticut#Bricks is correct.

On the other hand,  https://nofacilities.com/2022/02/17/buckingham-square-district/#Hartford #Connecticut #Bricks would fail.

Hashtags cannot include spaces. If you feel you need to use a tag that includes more than one word, please separate the words with an underscore character or a hyphen, , i.e. #historic_district or #historic-district

If you are linking your post by posting a pingback, you will need to include the hashtags at the end of your blog title. WordPress will concatenate those onto the pingback link.

The hashtags will not interfere with your link, and they will be stripped out when the Recap is processed.

Please keep in mind that the resulting tags need to fit in a column in the table that serves to display the recap. For now, the tags will replace the blogger location (which has not been adopted widely). I would appreciate it if you would give this a try, as it will help me test this feature.

As the title suggests, I have returned to the Buckingham Square district on Hartford’s south end.

Most of the pictures in the gallery are from Buckingham St and Capitol Avenue. I have included the last few photos from the National Registry of Historic Places Nomination form. I’ve included some pictures from slightly outside the district, but on the same streets as they extend to the Capitol area.

Holy Trinity Church and parish house in 1977
Gilbert brownstones in 1977
Gilbert brownstone row houses today
Gilbert brownstone doors
Gilbert brownstone on Capitol Ave. That’s holy Trinity Church at the end of the block
Buckingham Row Houses in 1977
Buckingham St row houses
Doors of row houses on Buckingham St.
Buckingham St. Hard to see, but I like the green
Standalone apartment building
Offices of Hartford Teachers’ Federation
A modern building west of the district but similar in some details
Standalone surviving building on Capitol Ave
The Buckingham and one other apartment building at the end of Capitol Ave
The Buckingham
This would be one of the responding units to an emergency in the Buckingham Square area

If you are in a hurry and don’t wish to scroll through the comments, click to Jump to the comment form.

141 comments

    • When I started this little series, Hilary, I was thinking, “I wish I had older versions of the photos than 1977.” Then I did the math. I came to Hartford in 1981. I didn’t make it out of the states until 30 years later.

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  9. A world that was built to last! Those Gilbert brownstone doors are something — everyone makes a grand entrance through those! What I can’t figure out is why 1977 appears to be such a long time ago in the photos. Wasn’t that just yesterday?

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    • Haha – I was just saying in an earlier reply that I wish I had been able to get photos from farther back than 1977. The photo with all the cars made me smile. The interesting thing is that these buildings were already 100 years old!

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  10. Great collection of brownstones with their awesome doors and windows, not to mention the incredible details on all these buildings.

    The Hartford Teachers Federation is a real beauty, and that’s an incredible mural on the surviving stand alone building. Even the Buckingham keeps with the flavor of the old.

    The bright red doors on the unique looking firehouse make quite a statement!

    Thanks for another great tour Dan. Hartford is a treasure trove of buildings that they’re determined to keep maintained and functioning.
    Ginger

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    • Thanks Ginger. Hartford has several interesting history regions, I guess most cities do, they just aren’t on thw tour guide. I was glad to see some doors that survived. They may not be original, but they are from a time before the effort to replace them with metal frame glass doors. I love that little firehouse, and the fact that the city build it to fit in with its neighbors.

      Take care tomorrow as we see what winter has for us.

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    • That’s a good question. I don’t know about that building, but that is the case in the building across the street at the other end of the block (it was in last week’s gallery), so I am guessing that they do.

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  16. Beautiful, Dan. I love the Buckingham and also am charmed by the fire station. I’ve always appreciated visiting the past through our buildings. Thank you for another informative journey.

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    • Thanks Jean. It’s good to see a post from you – some very interesting doors. I’m glad you like these buildings and I’m very glad I included the fire station. It’s south of the district I featured, but I like it.

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  23. Hi Dan, there is a lot to like about this week’s post, but of course my eye was drawn immediately to the full wall mural. Wonderful. Also some lovely double doors and fire station doors are always great to see. Thank you also for introducing the new #hashtag facility.

    It has been a while since I posted, but here is my modest offering from France in February:

    https://scooj.org/2022/02/24/thursday-doors-24-february-2022/#France#AlpedHuez#skiing

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    • Thanks Steve. I included that building mural for the street art fans of Thursday Doors. I don’t see much around here, but I’m trying to pay attention to the ones I do see.

      Great doors today from you, and thanls so much for including the tags.

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  24. You have me confused Dan. Hashtags are called tags in WordPress. “Go to your posts in WordPress, click on the cogwheel icon, then go to the Documents tab. Scroll down, type in the keywords you want for your tags, then hit Enter key on keyboard. After that, click the update button on the top right of your post editor, and you should see your tags show up in the tag cloud block.” I do not want to add them to the title of my post. Are you saying the hashtags should be added to the permalink?
    https://port4u.net/2022/02/24/midtown-doors-2/ My Midtown Doors.

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    • I am aware of WordPress tags, but that’s not what these are. Since I’m not collecting information from your post, I can’t collect your tags.

      Technically, what I’m asking for are called “fragments” not hashtags, but I thought most people would understand what a hashtag looks like, and there’s very little danger that the fragment would lead to the reader being directed to an anchor on someone’s post, as it would have to be one of WordPress’s internal anchor.

      I’m not asking you to change your title. That would only be for people who only want to include a pingback. You would only need to include the tags in the link you add in a comment here. Nothing has to be done on your page, and Teheran tags/fragments added here will not affect the navigation to your post.

      The only thing you have to do is append them to your link without any spaces. In the Sundat recap, they will no longer be attached to your link.

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  25. I’m going to have to figure out (hopefully) the hashtag thing at some later time but I really enjoyed your selection today. The double doors or pairs in particular remind me of many I’ve seen in Philadelphia. It’s been much too long since my last visit (well before Covid and before we moved) so I’m looking forward to getting back again both to visit our daughter and to stock up on doors and other photos. :-)

    Thursday doors…odd and more in Illinois

    janet

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    • Yes, I think you could find buildings like these up and down the east coast. I’m so glad that these have been preserved and well maintained. I had thought about visiting Philadelphia for a visit after I retired. I’ve been there for business many times, but never just as a tourist. It’s a lovely city.

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  26. Hi Dan,
    I know it’s not a door, but my favourite this week is that Sodo mural. It’s so bright and refreshing. Love it!
    This week, I’m off to Cloyne in County Cork. Here’s the link: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/2022/02/25/cloyne-county-cork-thursday-doors/#Ireland#Cloyne
    BTW my daughter turned 16 today. This allowed her to legally get her nose and bellybutton pierced without parental consent, and the sun hadn’t even set and it was done and dusted. I am just grateful it’s not a tattoo.
    Best wishes,
    Rowena

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    • At least piercings can be removed. Expression is an important part of growing up (I suppose).

      I included the mural because I know a lot of people that visit appreciate street art. I’m glad you like it. Thanks for adding the tags!

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  27. I do have a post idea for today, Dan, and will try your hashtag process. I love the black and white photos in your post. While I know life is full of color it somehow seems more antique and timeline appropriate in black and white. Isn’t that an absurd impression? 🤷‍♀️

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    • Thanks Cheryl. Remember, we’re open until noon Saturday, so no rush.

      One of the things I don’t understand well about photography is when black and white works better than color. I know it when I see others use it, but I’m never sure on my own. Of course, the older photos are B&W, so no choice by me involved.

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      • While I can’t speak for all photographers I love using black and white when shadow and light seem more valuable than color. Sometimes I edit both ways because both have value. I often used monochrome when a photo wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for. You get better definition. The best thing is to just play with some of your photos in black and white. I always loved sepia as well, especially for portraiture. 👍🏻

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  33. Those brownstones are beautiful. Which means the modern apartment building is a hard NO. I get the updated amenities in new buildings, but the character of those old buildings cannot be beat.

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    • Thanks Teagan. I love the older fire stations in Hartford. I like that the made the effort to make them blend in with the neighborhood they were protecting. I know a lot of people here like street art and murals, so I decided to try and capture it.

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  54. It’s interesting: when two garage doors are right next to each other, it feels “normal”, as in your fire truck doors example. When two house doors are right next to each other it feels … cramped? Too close without a couple of feet between them?

    Liked by 1 person

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