| A RIVER
RUNS UNDER IT:
A HOG RIVER HISTORY
text by Sandra
photos selected by Nancy
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Park River circa 1900.
HAS ITS OWN RIVER, one it doesn't share with Springfield or Middletown.
Once upon a time it was called the Little River, so it would not
be confused with the Great (Connecticut) River. After Bushnell Park
was created around it in the mid-19th century, the stream became
known as the Park River. This rather generic, genteel name was fitting
for a city that specialized in insurance and avoided risk.
Before Bushnell Park, though, it was the Hog River. That colorful
name came from the river's function when the city was in its first
spurts of growth and prosperity: it received the refuse and waste
from the tenements and factories that hugged its edges. The name
conveys a sense of willfulness and reluctance to be tamed which
was appropriate, for the river did not do its job. Instead of reliably
flushing nasty messes from the city, it brought disease when its
waters were low and devastation when they were high. It was dangerous,
and changing its name and putting it in a park did not lessen its
potential to cause destruction.
Living along the Park River, circa 1895.
The disease carried by the river in the summers was accepted as
part of life, especially since only the poorer of the city's citizens
lived near enough to be affected by the water-borne illnesses. The
floods, however, were a different matter. When the Connecticut River
was high, it backed up Hartford's river into the city. Unlike the
slow, chronic wasting of health and life the dirty waters inflicted
on the tenement dwellers, floods were dramatic, their devastation
quick and obvious. They damaged property, and the post-flood cleanups
cost lots of money.
The floods of 1936 and 1938 were particularly expensive, and city,
state, and even federal authorities paid attention. After the 1936
flood, Mayor Spellacy established a Flood Control Commission, and
the even bigger flood two years later added urgency to that commission's
work. Also by late 1938, the U.S. War Department was interested,
for increasing concern over the likelihood of war in Europe meant
America's rapidly expanding defense industry in the Hartford area
had to be protected from any loss of time or materials. Plans for
a system of dikes along the Connecticut River and for putting Hartford's
river underground in what was known as the Park River Conduit were
first created by the Hartford Department of Engineers and then taken
over and finalized by the Office of the District Engineer of the
War Department. That office also supervised construction, which
began in September 1940 and was completed in November 1943.
Conduit workmen. The project proceeded
through densely populated areas of the city, often very close
to the factories and tenements that lined the riverbank. People
went about their daily lives during the construction; note the
laundry hung out to dry. July 1942.
The conduit, made of reinforced concrete, was just over a mile long
(5,800 feet) and ran from the Connecticut River to the space between
the Capitol and Armory buildings. The river was confined in two
tubes, each 30 feet wide and 19 feet high; these ran under Commerce,
Front, Prospect, and Main Streets and were covered by a roadway.
The section under the park was covered by grass, and a small pond
was created so the park would not be entirely devoid of water.
Reports of the cost of the Park River Conduit vary, but it seems
to have been somewhere between $3,000,000 and $4,300,000. We know
little about the people who carried out the construction. The contractor,
B. Perini & Sons, was from Massachusetts. In speeches at the
1943 ceremony during which the U. S. Army Engineers gave the conduit
to the city, Governor Raymond E. Baldwin was the only one to refer
to the "individual workmen," noting that their successful
completion of the job symbolized cooperation among local and federal
agencies. Hartford's Engineering Department documented the project
with hundreds of photographs. These show that the workforce was
racially integrated, though who held which jobs, how many people
worked on the project, what their hours were and what they were
paid, where they were from, and where they went when finished are
Since the 1940s, the flood control system has been refined and
extended, and newcomers to Hartford are surprised to discover that
the city once had a river running through it. Adventurers know how
to gain access to the buried river in canoes (at low water only)
and report that it is a bit spooky and dark, but clean and quiet
in the conduit. The river is still there. What is its name now?
Top and bottom images from the Hartford Collection at the Hartford
Public Library. Middle image is from the Taylor Collection, Connecticut