How the Richest City in America Went Completely Broke: Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut: The Richest City in America Once declared the wealthiest city per capita in the United States, Hartford rose on insurance money, precision manufacturing, and a literary culture that gave the Gilded Age its name. This documentary traces the city from its 1636 founding on the Connecticut River through its extraordinary peak — when the Travelers Tower was the tallest building in New England, Colt's armory was the largest private arms factory in the world, and Mark Twain chose Hartford over every other city in America to build his home and write his masterworks. It follows the insurance capital through the grand department store era of G. Fox & Company, the wartime industrial boom, and the quiet accumulation of losses that turned one of the richest cities in the country into one of the poorest: the suburban exodus, the highways that cut downtown from its own river, the urban renewal that erased entire neighborhoods, and the departure of the Hartford Whalers. What remains is a city still defined by what it built — and by what it let go. Sources Ellsworth S. Grant and Marion Hepburn Grant, The City of Hartford, 1784–1984 (Connecticut Historical Society, 1986) Daniel Sterner, Vanished Downtown Hartford (The History Press, 2013) William Hosley, Colt: The Making of an American Legend (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996) Jack Dougherty et al., "The Richest City in the Nation," On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs (Trinity College) Connecticut History / CTHumanities project articles — particularly on Aetna, G. Fox & Co., Constitution Plaza, and the Wadsworth Atheneum (connecticuthistory.org) Stewart O'Nan, The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy (Doubleday, 2000)