The Little Hollywood Historic District encompasses a concentrated collection of apartment buildings built mainly between the world wars in the West End neighborhood of

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 ...

. Located on Farmington Avenue and Owen, Frederick, and Denison Streets, they were built primarily to attract single tenants seeking small apartments, a trend that developed after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and ended after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The district was listed on the

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 ...

in 1982.

Description and history

Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood, located west of the city center, was for many years a fashionable address, where handsome houses and small estates were built for the city's business, political, and cultural elite. By the early 20th century, increased mobility pushed desirable addresses further out of the city, and the Asylum Hill area began to be redeveloped to attract a more middle-class populace. The Little Hollywood area, located in the West End just west of the Nook Farm area, began to be developed in this way before World War I, with a series of apartment houses on Farmington Avenue. Owen, Frederick, and Denison Streets were developed between 1919 and 1923. Most of the buildings were designed by local architects, with the single largest number (16 of the 39 buildings) the work of George H. Matthews. The historic district includes a row of brick apartment houses, three and four stories in height, on the north side of Farmington Avenue, just east of Loraine Street. Two prominent buildings are on the south side, on either side of Owen Street. These are the most architecturally sophisticated of the district's buildings, showing a diversity of styles including the

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

, Chicago School, and the

Jacobethan The Jacobethan or Jacobean Revival architectural style is the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance (15 ...

. Owen, Frederick, and Denison Streets include a mix of pre-World War II and post-World War II buildings; the latter are excluded from the district. These, while still showing some architectural style, are generally simpler than those facing Farmington Avenue.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in Hartford, Connecticut Queen Anne architecture in Connecticut Shingle Style architecture in Connecticut Historic districts in Hartford County, Connecticut

Description and history

See also

References