The Goodwin Hotel, is a historic hotel and apartment building located in downtown
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
. Known for its distinctive
English Queen Anne terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, a ...
facade, the building was originally developed as an apartment building by brothers James J. Goodwin and Rev.
Francis Goodwin and opened in 1881. It was designed by
Francis Kimball and was modeled on buildings Rev. Goodwin had seen being constructed at the time in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. Kimball, of the firm of Kimball & Wisedell, was the architect for the
Day House in Hartford, which also has an English Queen Anne design. The Goodwin Building was expanded in 1891 to Ann Street and in 1900 to Pearl Street. It was a very prestigious address at the time, with even
J.P. Morgan
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living there during his visits to the city of his birth.
In 1985-1986, the building's
Arts and Crafts style interior was gutted to prepare for the structure's incorporation into a new office tower, Goodwin Square, completed in 1989. The facade was preserved, incorporated into the 1980s
Goodwin Square office tower built within the original building's footprint. It is the anchor structure within a
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
historic district that includes three adjoining buildings from the same time period. That same year, the Goodwin Hotel opened in the former apartment building.
The hotel operated within the Goodwin Square complex, but closed on December 29, 2008, after losing money for several years. The building's owners hoped to lease it to another operator for as little as $1 a year to keep the historical inn open, but no deal could be reached. The doors initially had to be chained shut, as they had never needed to be locked for the previous 19 years.
After foreclosure in 2013, the Goodwin Square complex entered a period of limbo before being bought by a
Wilton real estate firm in May 2015. Westport Capital Partners, which together with two co-investors bought the hotel and adjoining skyscraper in an online auction for $17.6 million. The hotel portion of the complex was sold to a hospitality group based in Stamford, Greenwich Hospitality, which owns and operates numerous hotels in the region, under the brands Hotel Zero Degrees and Delamar Hotels. After a complete renovation, the hotel reopened in June 2017.
The flagship restaurant has been renamed Harlan Braserrie and opened at the same time.
See also
*
Goodwin Square
*
References
External links
{{National Register of Historic Places
Hotels in Connecticut
Buildings and structures in Hartford, Connecticut
Hotels established in 1989
Hotel buildings completed in 1881
National Register of Historic Places in Hartford, Connecticut
Queen Anne architecture in Connecticut