Postcards from Hartford

"Looking across Connecticut River towards Travelers Building, Hartford, Conn.," reads the title of this postcard, which is undated but appears to date from the 1920s. The antenna next to the Travelers tower probably belongs to Travelers-owned WTIC-AM, which began broadcasting from the insurer's offices in February 1925. A new antenna was erected on Avon Mountain in 1929. Clearly, the postcard pre-dates the flood dikes, which went up in the early 1940s. You can see the tenement buildings of the Front Street neighborhood to the right. It's doubtful the river was a clean as the illustrator makes it appear; if anything, it probably is much cleaner now.

The maker of the postcard included this information on the back: "Hartford, capital city of Connecticut, was founded in 1636. Today it is the state's largest city and the 'Insurance Center of the World,' with 45 home offices employing 13,000 persons.'"