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Wethersfield Historical Society

Wethersfield Historical Society

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Chapter VI – Connecting With Hartford

Home » Articles From The Community » Chapter VI – Connecting With Hartford

The major issue in the suburbanization of Wethersfield identified in the 1928 town plan was “Thoroughfare Connections With Hartford.”

“The thoroughfare facilities between Wethersfield and the down-town business district in Hartford must be of the best, in order to facilitate the proper development of the large vacant areas in Wethersfield.

“There are today [1928] but three thoroughfares in Hartford that extend in a southerly direction to the Wethersfield town line — Wethersfield Avenue, Franklin Avenue, and Maple Avenue. A fourth, Campfield Avenue, tops a half-block short of the Wethersfield town line…. Of the different thoroughfares that come down to the town line, only one — the New Haven Turnpike — traverses the entire town of Wethersfield.”

What is now known as the Berlin Turnpike was, in 1928, called the New Haven Turnpike.

According to www.kurumi.com “Although the Berlin Turnpike never charged a toll, its ancestor did two centuries ago. In October 1798, the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company was created, and the road opening in 1799 was one of the first turnpikes to eschew existing roads and be built on as straight a line as feasible. (Though Berlin historian Kathleen Murray reports in a New York Times article that the Hartford – New Haven Path on this route dates back to 1717.)

“Leaving Hartford on Maple Street, the turnpike mostly followed today’s US 5 through Meriden into New Haven, entering on Whitney Avenue.

“I’m not sure if the name ‘Berlin Turnpike’ predates the time the road was widened in 1942 — there was no such name in the 19th-century turnpike era. But the road was nonetheless important, and included in Connecticut’s trunk line system in 1913. When the New England Interstate route numbering system was adopted in 1922, the road became part of New England Route 2. When the US route system was inaugurated in 1926, NE-2 became US 5.”

In other words the Berlin Turnpike developed pretty much into what the 1928 Wethersfield town plan wanted, when it wanted it.

“The New Haven Turnpike through Wethersfield is merely an ordinary state highway with a substantial pavement 18 feet wide. The comprehensive plan would convert this thoroughfare into a formal parkway with a width of 200 feet.”

And another north-south thoroughfare, not mentioned at all in the 1928 town plan, probably satisfied the remaining north-south traffic requirements.

“The alignment of Route 99 was originally designated as part of New England Interstate Route 10 in the 1920s. The Silas Deane Highway was built in 1930 and New England Route 10 was shifted slightly west to use the new highway. In the 1932 state highway renumbering, the alignment was re-designated as Route 9. When Route 9 was upgraded to an expressway between I-91 and I-95 in 1969, the old surface alignment became Route 99.” (wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Deane_Highway)

With easy access to and from the city of Hartford along both the east and west borders of town (possibly financed by state and federal monies) there apparently was no longer any real need for a road of the size and complexity of Goodwin Parkway.

The 1928 Wethersfield town Plan says “This parkway, however, has a function that is almost as important — probably more important — than to serve traffic. The land of either side of Beaver Brook is low and marshy. Although the land is capable of being drained, this would be expensive, and it is a question whether, because of existing developments and the obstacles that might be thrown into the way of developing the land with private buildings might not be so great as to simply treat it as a parkway…. If present conditions are allowed to continue, it is feared that these may cast a blight upon large areas of land in either side and thus prejudice the best development of the whole town.”

The Goodwin Parkway was never built. Instead, as described in its minutes, on July 10, 1933 The Bureau of Public Works of
the Metropolitan [Water] District “respectfully” recommended “the layout of a street or highway to be known as Folly Brook Boulevard extending from Camp Field Avenue in Hartford to Griswold Road in Wethersfield.”

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Articles from the Community

  • Articles from the Community
    • 284 Brimfield Road
    • A Birds-eye View of Wethersfield's History
    • A Boyhood Visit to G. Fox & Company
    • A Brief History of Wethersfield United Methodist Church
    • A History of Franklin Avenue
    • A History of Temple Beth Torah
    • A Life of William Beadle
    • A Shepard and his Flock: Counting Chairs and Tracking Down Apprentices at the Wethersfield Historical Society
    • A Whaling Family
    • About the Authors
    • Black History in Wethersfield
    • Childhood Memories of the Wethersfield Homefront
    • Colonel John Chester
    • Connecticut at War: 1634 – 1781
    • Connecticut's Black Governors
    • Connecticut's Witch Trials
    • Dividend
    • Fairway 6
    • Foodways
    • Francesco A. Lentini – Three-Legged Wonder
    • Frank and Lou
    • George Whitefield – The Billy Graham of Colonial America
    • Governor Thomas Welles
    • Griswoldville Connecticut (1680-1987)
    • History of Public Libraries in Wethersfield
    • History of the Church of the Incarnation
    • History of Trinity Parish (Episcopal)
    • History of Wethersfield Library
    • Horribles Parade
    • Horseradish King
    • Houses of Worship
    • Irish Immigrants in Wethersfield 1860 to 1900: Outcasts to Neighbors
    • Issacson's Field Plane Crash
    • Jared Butler Standish
    • Meet Mr. Wethersfield: Alfred W. Hanmer
    • Mill Woods Park: A History
    • One Branch of the Josiah Willard Family of Wethersfield
    • Rediscovering Benjamin Lee Whorf
    • Religion in Glastonbury: the Congregationalists
    • Reverend and Colonel Elisha Williams
    • Rocky Hill: A History
    • Sgt. Maj. Robert H. Kellogg
    • Slavery and Wethersfield
    • Sophia Woodhouse's Grass Bonnets
    • Still Fighting Fires After All These Years
    • Table of Contents
    • The "Conference State"
    • The Blue Violet
    • The Chesters of Blaby Leicestershire England
    • The Contentious Life of James Wakelee
    • The Eel-Catcher’s Travels: Robert Seeley 1602-1667
    • The First Church of Christ
    • The Undoing of Silas Deane
    • The Welles Family and the Establishment of Newington
    • The Wethersfield Elms
    • The Wethersfield Meteorites
    • The Woman Came To Do Laundry
    • They Even Survived Rocks on the Track
    • Thomas Hickey: George Washington's Wethersfield Kidnapper
    • Town's Biggest Fire
    • Twentieth-Century Wethersfield
    • Wethersfield Almshouse 1843-44
    • Wethersfield Enters the Revolution
    • Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church
    • Wethersfield Illinois
    • Wethersfield in the Civil War by Wes Christensen
    • Wethersfield Prison Blues
    • Wethersfield Street Life 1634-1995
    • Wethersfield Summers
    • Wethersfield: A History
    • Wethersfield: The Cradle of American Seed Companies
    • Wethersfield's "Other" Plane Accidents
    • Wethersfield's Homebuilders: 1634 – 1900
    • Wethersfield's Homebuilders: 1900 – 1930
    • Wethersfield's Homebuilders: 1940s and Beyond
    • Wethersfield's Top 10 Natural Disasters
    • Wethersfield’s Dinosaur Footprints
    • Wethersfield's Glorious Baseball History
    • Who was Charles Wright?
    • William W. Anderson Veteran of the Allied Invasion of Normandy June 6
    • Wintergreen Woods: A History
Wethersfield Historical Society Wethersfield Historical Society
150 Main Street, Wethersfield, CT 06109
p. (860) 529-7656 f. (860) 563-2609
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