【by Lily McMahon】

The was, is, and will be of Hartford.

It is Hartford seen in a purple light. / A moment ago, light masculine, / Working, with big hands, on the town, / Arranged its heroic attitudes1. 

A group of people posing for a photo

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A person holding a baby and a child standing in a park

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Image One: (From left to right) My Great Uncle Joe, Great Grandma, Grandpa (sitting), Great Uncle Ray (standing), Great Grandpa Joseph, and Great Uncle George. 

Image Two: My Grandma Dot’s brother Bill, Her Dad (William Hussey), and Great Grandma Dot in Elizabeth Park. 

Outsiders think about Hartford in the past tense. When you hear about Hartford you hear about what it was. Hartford was the insurance capital, Hartford was booming with activity and life, Hartford was walkable, a place where people moved to raise their families. Hartford was, but never Hartford is especially when it comes to positive aspects of the city. 

Hartford Has It! or so the slogan says. The banners run down the main streets of Hartford, with images of all the fun things to do in Hartford now. Go out to eat in Blue Back Square, see the Yard Goats, go to the Mark Twain House, the Wadsworth, Elizabeth Park. The public was so focused on the past tense of Hartford that The Hartford Business Improvement District had to create an initiative to focus on city destinations, events, and attractions2. Their mission statement is, “to bring about positive and lasting change by enhancing the economic vitality and quality of life within the district.” Even the city of Hartford seems consumed by change, by the was and the past of Hartford. You wonder if it works. Does anyone look at one of the Business Improvement sponsored street signs and think to themselves, “You know what? They’re right! Hartford does have it.” It feels sterile. But how do you move an entire city out of its own shadow? Its own past that suffocates it, the perceptions and histories and opinions that surround the land.

That brave man comes up / From below and walks without meditation, / That brave man3 

A group of people drawing on the sidewalk

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A group of people standing in front of a fence

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Image One: Other students and I decorating the streets of Frog Hollow with chalk. 

Image Two: A Trinity class exploring the neighbors of Hartford. 

“You go to school at Trinity College? Rough neighborhood, don’t you feel so unsafe?” 

The age-old question, asked by another boomer who doesn’t know you. Internally you sigh, this is not the first time you have heard this, in fact, you already heard it this week. You’ve heard it in the grocery store while you are wearing a worn crewneck with the aforementioned words, in golden letters across your chest. You hear it at work when your coworker knows a guy who knows a guy who had a cousin who went there. You hear it from every old white guy, they think it’s extremely funny, they probably laugh as they say it. They don’t want to know what your major is, what year you are in, or what you do for fun. They want to know if you feel safe. 

Safe… 

At first you try and fight it, you ask them what they mean by that, you press them. To make them experience the same discomfort that their question instills in you. You think of the demographics that create the feeling of such horrible weight to the questions they ask. Comparing Hartford’s 72.2% of residents being people of color to the 94.5% of white people in your hometown4 5. Even if they don’t intend to, you wonder if their fear of Hartford stems from their fear of the other. Xenophobia. Racism. Do they really worry for your safety? Or is this their excuse to express their racist rhetoric to a random 19-year-old in the grocery store? WHY DO YOU CARE IF IT IS SAFE! You want to scream. You don’t know me. My life. You have probably never been to Hartford.

It feels like a weirdo obsession, why is the discussion on this city so centered around safety? You look online and find websites and online forums, all documenting the ways that Hartford can’t be trusted. “How is Hartford, CT in general?” on www.quora.com “How is the crime rate? Is downtown Hartford safe?” on www.reddit.com and “Why is Hartford, CT so Dangerous? (2023)” on www.connecticut-bailbonds.com/blog you don’t see these types of websites and forums with other cities. It’s on personal forums and social media too, people sharing all the ways that Hartford is “unsafe.” Yet you have never felt unsafe in Hartford. You’ve felt more unsafe in the fenced-in Trinity College campus than you ever have beyond the walls. 

“I’ve never felt unsafe, thanks so much for asking.”

You smile so wide that you think that your skin might tear. You’ve stopped trying to argue with strangers about Hartford, defending its honor when you know they aren’t even listening. You’ve instead opted for the “smile and wave” approach. Where you say as little as possible in hopes that they will leave you alone.    

You feel upset that they don’t get it. Their assumptions, the second and third-hand rumors that they have let govern their life. You feel guilty that they think you are the type of person that will agree with them. You have always felt safe in Hartford. 

The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be. / The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: / The access of perfection to the page. / And the world was calm6.  

A child standing on a rock

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A sign on a wooden post

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Image One: My Grandmother aged 1 ½ in East Hartford where she grew up. 

Image Two: The park in East Hartford that was named after my Great Grandfather.  

At what point does a place start being home? When do I have the right to claim sentiment and ownership of a place, a state, a city. 

When I was 17 years old, I toured a school in an area I knew quite well. Hartford. It hadn’t been on my radar, but my college advisor had put it on my list of potential schools to tour, so I woke up in the morning on a rainy April day and made the trek to Hartford. 

My Dad is from Newington, a small suburban town just 15 minutes from campus. I grew up coming to the area on holidays, and to spend time with my grandparents. We would even sometimes make the journey into the city, to see where my Mom and Dad met at the University of Hartford or see a family friend. But I never felt any connection to the city. Especially as a child, I would have much rather been playing in the leaves outside my grandparents’ house on Johnson Street than be anywhere else. Trinity was just another school to check off a 30+ school touring list. 

It was raining and I was tired. We had come late to the information session because we were coming from another Connecticut school visit. As we are walking around the campus, I look at the students passing by as I so often did. I look at them chatting with friends, running to class, studying in the library and I wonder if they would hypothetically be the type of people who would be my friends. I mentally insert myself into their conversations, my Mom calls this “sticky beak syndrome” but I needed to make sure that I could call this place home. I was so scared to go to college, where no one knows you are. Dreading having to do the whole “scared kindergarten on the playground” thing all over again. 

While we’re on the tour, Mom gets a call that my grandmother is sick with a cold. She’s in an assisted living center in Newington, and since we are so close – we decide that it’s best if we stop by and check in on her. 

Grandma had Alzheimer’s, and it had gotten bad within the last few years, even more so since Grandpa passed away a month prior. I don’t think Grandma knew who I was when I walked in, but I held her hand and told her about my recent school play – Into the Woods, about how my brother’s baseball season is beginning, and about how I toured Trinity College today. 

“Oh! Trinity is a wonderful school.” 

My heart skipped a beat. For a brief moment Grandma was herself again. The one I knew. The bright light she used to be. I beamed with excitement and trusted her intrinsically in this moment. Any fear I had after my tour was washed away, and without even realizing, my connection to Hartford was created and solidified in that moment. Without even comprehending it, Hartford became a home to me.

Yet the absence of the imagination had / Itself to be imagined. The great pond, / The plain sense of it, without reflection, leaves, / mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence7 

A group of people standing together

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A person on a bicycle

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Image One: My Great Aunt Anna Hussey, Great Grandma Dot, Great Uncle Neil, and Great Grandpa Neil. Image Two: My Grandfather riding a bike in Hartford.

Wallace Stevens, famous Hartford poet of the 20th century, never learned how to drive a car; he would regularly walk the two miles from his home to his office, often walking through the nearby Elizabeth Park8. Hartford is seen by many as a stopping point. A selling point of the city is its approximation to other “bigger and shiner” cities, the 7/11 equivalent to an American city. So much of what is seen about Hartford is centered around driving, since the construction of I-84, so much of the Hartford experience has been from that of a 4-person automobile. What does it even mean to look outside the moving glass of your car? 

I like to think about the moments of connection that people have when they walk in a city. Those moments when you look up, see something new – maybe take a route that you hadn’t before. Some describe it as being a flaneur, someone who strolls, often aimlessly through the streets in a city9

Wallace Stevens may have been described by his neighbors as a flaneur, or perhaps a crazy person, depending on who you asked. It’s said that “he would amble along Asylum Avenue methodically measuring the pace of his steps and murmuring phrases to himself — phrases that would become some of the most haunting lines in the English language.”10 The streets of Hartford were his creative space, where he could connect with himself and nature before his job at an insurance company. 

Stevens on his walks through Hartford saw the beauty that so many of us now forget to consider. But I don’t think it’s our fault. The transportation landscape has changed in Hartford significantly since Stevens was making his trek to work. Hartford was walkable for Stevens; sure, it was a bold choice to walk a four miles round trip to work – but it was a choice that he was able to make. That choice was taken from Hartford citizens when the I-84 carved a swath out of the city’s downtown, creating a physical—as well as ethnic, racial, and economic—divide.11 Hartford physically and emotionally changed when the highway was created. While it has adapted, I don’t think it has recovered. What does it mean to live in a city where you must be isolated in your personal car to get around? It separates you from people and community, and from the histories of spaces.  

I hate driving, I hate that I must drive to get around this city. I think about driving past the walk that he made to work each day, how many times have I done so without a second thought? The same walk that leads to countless profound works is where I pass to get to stop and shop12. The homes where Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe Center wrote countless iconic pieces is where I drive to go to Target13. How many people do I fail to connect with because the choice to flaneur like Stevens has been taken from us?  

When the wind stops and, over the heavens, / The clouds go, nevertheless, / In their direction14. 

An older person sitting on a couch holding a framed picture of a baby

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A group of people posing for a photo

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 Image One: My Great Grandma Dot at 99 years old, holding a baby photo of herself. 

Image Two: (From left to right) My mother, Great Grandma, Uncle Joe, Dad, myself, Grandpa, Aunt Laurie, Grandma, and Uncle Paul. 

Wallace Stevens was walking the streets of Hartford at the same time that my Great Grandma Dot was walking to Our Lady of Sorrows Church Primary School on Greenwood Street. Wallace Stevens was walking home at the same time that my Grandpa was riding bikes with his cousins Walt and Bob on Sharon St, just a 25-minute walk away15. Wallace Stevens wrote “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”16 at the same time that my Grandma Dot and her brother, “were young children [and their] family used to go to Elizabeth Park and Pope Park on Sundays17.” 

My Great Grandma Dot lived to be 104 years old, when I was a child she would tell me stories from her childhood, an experience that I could not begin to understand. Every aspect of my time with my Great Grandma was a testament to lived history. When I would visit, I would sit in a tiny wicker chair that was Grandma Dot’s when she was a child, gifted to her by her Grandfather who was the Head Jailer at the Sims Street Jail in Hartford. I didn’t know at the time, but it was made by one of the inmates there18

When I first arrived at Trinity in the fall of 2020, I felt lost. I was in a new city in a time filled with anxiety and uncertainty unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. I left my freshman year feeling even more alone. I didn’t feel like I connected with anyone or anything. I decided to give the school one more semester, and if I didn’t like it – I would transfer. I came back my sophomore year and realized that Hartford was not a new city, it was my history. I began to see my family in everything, in my classes, in my friends, in the places I went, the people I met. I felt and continue to feel connected to this city in a way that I never knew I could. Trinity feels like home because Hartford feels like home. Hartford is a chance to reconnect with family history, and to discover new things about myself. I would not be who I am without this city.  

Hartford and my family show me that history is alive. I saw it when talking to my Great-Grandmother as a child, hearing the joy and hardships that she experienced as a child. Having her mother die at 10, experiencing the Great Depression with a newborn, living to see your 11 Great-Grandchildren and 5 Great-Great-Grandchildren be born. Hartford is my Great-Grandmother’s experience and my Grandparents. Hartford is where they grew up and met one another. Hartford is my parent’s history, meeting each other and all of their friends who I know to this day at the University of Hartford. Hartford has always been all around me, integral to my family history and lived experience, even if I had yet to realize it. Hartford makes me fundamentally who I am. And this experience is not unique. Many more before and after me will choose to see Hartford in “Purple Light.”

Works Cited 

“About Us.” Hartford Has It, October 18, 2023. https://hartford.com/about-us/. 

“Analysis of Poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird … – Owlcation.” owlcation, 

October 4, 2023. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Thirteen-Ways-of-Looking-at-a-Blackbird-by-Wallace-Stevens. 

Daniel, and Macleod. “Wallace Stevens House (1926).” Historic Buildings of Connecticut, 

April 24, 2018. https://historicbuildingsct.com/the-wallace-stevens-house-1920/#:~:text=Originally%20from%20Reading%2C%20Pennsylvania%2C%20he,118%20Westerly%20Terrace%20in%20Hartford. 

Will Willingham Director of Many Things; Senior Editor. “Walk to Work with a Poet: The 

Wallace Stevens Walk.” Tweetspeak Poetry, July 28, 2021. https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2013/08/26/wallace-stevens-walk/. 

Gordinier, Jeff. “For Wallace Stevens, Hartford as Muse.” The New York Times, February 

23, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/travel/for-the-poet-wallace-stevens-hartford-was-an-unlikely-muse.html. 

“The Interstate Highway System Comes to Hartford – Connecticut History: A Cthumanities 

Project.” Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project – Stories about the people, traditions, innovations, and events that make up Connecticut’s rich history., September 7, 2023. https://connecticuthistory.org/the-interstate-highway-system-comes-to-hartford/#:~:text=Whereas%20I%2D91%20skirted%20the,bisected%20or%20eliminated%20entire%20neighborhoods. 

“Is Downtown Hartford Safe?” Reddit, 2020. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hartford/comments/mx4eky/is_downtown_hartford_safe/.

“Quora.” How is Hartford, CT in general? How is the crime rate?, May 11, 2023. 

https://www.quora.com/How-is-Hartford-CT-in-general-How-is-the-crime-rate/answer/Anne-Brown-19.

Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “The Art of Being a Flâneur.” The New York Times, June 19, 

2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/travel/walking-travel-cities.html. 

Stevens, Wallace, John N. Serio, and Chris Beyers. The Collected Poems of Wallace 

Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 2015. 

“U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Hartford City, Connecticut.” QuickFacts Hartford city, 

Connecticut. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/hartfordcityconnecticut/PST045222. 

“U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Kennebunk CDP, Maine.” QuickFacts Kennebunk CDP, 

Maine. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kennebunkcdpmaine/PST045222. 

“Where Mr. Twain and Mrs. Stowe Built Their Dream Houses – Connecticut History: A 

Cthumanities Project.” Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project – Stories about the people, traditions, innovations, and events that make up Connecticut’s rich history., September 1, 2023. https://connecticuthistory.org/where-mr-twain-and-mrs-stowe-built-their-dream-houses/. 

“Why Is Hartford, CT so Dangerous? (2023) – Connecticut Bail Bonds.” Connecticut Bail 

Bonds Group, June 5, 2023. https://www.connecticut-bailbonds.com/blog/hartford-ct-most-dangerous-place-in-connecticut/#:~:text=Crime%20Rate%20of%20Hartford%2C%20CT&text=In%20Hartford%2C%20the%20probability%20of,rate%20surpasses%2089%25%20of%20them.

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