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.
Thursday Doors Schedule Update – There will be no Thursday Doors post here on August 18th. Accordingly, there will be no Recap post on Sunday August 21st. I know, that’s a month away, but since some people don’t participate every week, I will include this announcement each Thursday between now and then.
Clay Hill, sometimes also referred to as the Clay Hill Arsenal District is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Hartford. Early in the 1800’s it was home to Irish immigrants who were being recruited to work on the Windsor Locks Canal. Early in the 1900’s, it was home to Jewish immigrants fleeing rising antisemitism in Europe.
Over the next two or three weeks, I’m going to be exploring the houses and buildings built during those two periods. Like other historic districts I’ve explored, this entire area has been established in the National Registry of Historic Places (NRHP). Unlike many of those other districts, there are several buildings that have been independently listed in the NRHP. I’m going to start with two of those. Most of the information presented below is from the NRHP nomination forms. I have also included photos from those forms, including some rare interior images.
The first building is a firehouse built for Engine Company 2. According to the NRHP nomination form
1515 Main Street was the second firehouse built for Engine Company 2, organized when the City created the paid department in 1864. It is one of two surviving Hartford firehouses built to house both men and horses, which places it in a distinct period in the history of the city’s fire service. Overall, the firehouse displays a high level of integrity and is an uncommon example of the Italian Renaissance style applied to the design of a firehouse.
National Registry of Historic Places
The other building I’m sharing today is the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. Again, according to the NRHP nomination form.
Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church is a large brick building built in the High Victorian Gothic style in 1873- 1874. Still in use for religious services, it has served the present congregation since 1926, before which it was known as the North Methodist Episcopal Church. 1 The area is a densely built, urban residential and commercial neighborhood along a wide and heavily traveled street. The building measures 60′ by 96′ in plan and, except for passageways on either side and a small area at the back of the church, almost entirely fills its lot. The building faces east, with the facade dominated by a 3 1/2-story gabled projection and towers at each of the front corners. The north tower is the smaller of the two, with its two stories surmounted by a steep hip roof with small gabled dormers. The south tower has three full stories, to which are added a tall gabled belfry with Gothic-arched louvered openings and a slate-covered octagonal spire. Each tower has an entrance at the base, with a wide dripmold, modern double doors, and a banding of stone along the jambs. On the second story of each tower are a set of adjacent small windows, five on the larger tower and three on the smaller. The projecting bay between the towers is symmetrically arranged, with two small openings on the first story, three windows on the second story, a triptych of three large windows on the third story, and a circular window in the gable. The windows all take the shape of blunt-pointed arches and have stone sills, heads, and banded sides. The larger windows are subdivided by tracery into two main panels and are filled with simple painted and stained glass, mostly in floral patterns. There are stepped buttresses with stone coping at all the corners of the building and stone stringcourses between stories. The stone details, the light color of which forms a distinct contrast with the red brickwork, are continued on the sides of the building and, except for the stringcourses, even onto the relatively plain rear elevation.
National Registry of Historic Places
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All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
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