Landscape Information
Located approximately two-and-a-half miles northwest of downtown, between Albany Avenue and the Park River, this 32-acre campus provides the setting for a children’s welfare organization—the product of a series of mergers between several groups, including the Hartford Female Beneficent Society (1809), the Hartford Orphan Asylum (1833) and Connecticut Children’s Aid Society (1892). After acquiring the original sixteen-acre parcel from Reverend Francis Goodwin in the early twentieth century, the organization engaged architect Grosvenor Atterbury to develop the grounds as an orphan asylum. Atterbury’s design adopted the cottage system, which sought to minimize the effects of institutionalization and emphasized the individual treatment of children in a home-like atmosphere. On a relatively level plateau west of the river, he grouped seven residentially scaled buildings—based on English vernacular country architecture—around a central, rectangular green encircled by an oval drive. Atterbury sited an eighth building northeast of the green, on axis with its midpoint.
Today the rolling green—oriented on a northwest-southeast axis—is traversed by linear brick walkways that frame rectangular lawn panels populated by irregularly spaced maple trees. The far ends of the green are anchored by H-shaped buildings whereas its edges are characterized by facing buildings arranged in rows. A central flagpole flanked by two play areas marks the green’s northwestern axial terminus. Beyond, a lawn dotted with deciduous canopy trees and recreational amenities, includes a basketball court and a looped, bifurcating, curvilinear path. East of the green are parking areas edged by lawn and second-growth riparian woodland. The campus is framed by a metal fence supported by brick pillars (2022). The fence is set back from Albany Avenue, which is edged by a sidewalk.
The property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
