Hartford’s West End Remembered
The Architectural History and Resources Committee is excited to present a series of memories of living in Hartford’s historic West End. Inspired by Carolyn West’s memoir of living on Kenyon Street that she presented at Porchfest, we are assembling some of the “histories” West Enders have experienced during their years in the neighborhood. These will be chronicled and distributed one post via monthly email and, hopefully, compile enough stories for a printed piece.
We invite you to join this project by sharing some of your own “West End History.” Photos would also be of great interest. There is no minimum or maximum length to your contribution – even one anecdote of a significant event can be of great importance in connecting our collective history. Please send your content to: ahr@wecahartford.org.
West End Histories:
Vol. I: Timothy Fisher (April, 2025)
My family (parents Clyde & Alice Fisher, brother Andrew and I), moved to 76 North Beacon in August 1969.
We were coming from Santurce, Puerto Rico, where my father had worked as a consultant for the Commonwealth government planning board, but we were originally from Connecticut. Andy and I enrolled at Hartford Public High School, where I graduated in 1971 (just had our 50th reunion!) and Andy in 1973.
Hartford High was led at the time by its Principal, Duncan Yetman. He was a magnificent person, and was the first true leader who I ever experienced in person. Throughout my life since I have often sought to emulate his character.
The family soon got involved in community affairs. Andy was in the class of first student members (non-voting) of the Hartford Board of Education, an idea sponsored by then Board President Sandy Klebanoff. Our Dad was active in WECA and went on to be President, and was on later the Elizabeth Park Conservancy board. I was active in student government and Vietnam Moratorium organizing, and served as “Junior Mayor” of the City of Hartford in 1970. A few years ago I got to have a personal reunion with Ann Uccello, who was the actual (!) mayor at that time.
The student activist stuff got me in trouble once. January 1970 marked the second year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday since his assassination. It was not yet a holiday in Hartford or to my knowledge anywhere else. The school held an assembly to honor his memory, but several students interrupted it to call for a walk-out in protest of the absence of greater recognition. I decided that the courage of my convictions required that I join them, which I did. I still have a copy of the Registered Mail letter to my parents explaining that I was suspended from school for a week in punishment.
I was out of town for college and law school, but then moved back to 8 Fern Street after graduation, before buying the house at 76 Kenyon in 1982. Years later I got the job at Dean of the UConn Law School, which occasioned my long hoped-for move back into the West End, where I now live on Scarborough.
Coincidentally, when I was at Hartford High I sometimes studied in the stately Reading Room of the Hartford Seminary’s library. That was the very same room where years later I gave a speech that seems to have induced the faculty to vote for me as their next Dean in 2013.
It has been wonderful to be back in this great neighborhood. Amazingly, it still feels the same as it did 55 years ago.