History Lessons

Are Windsor Locks’ present troubles grounded in its past?

Unsafe streets, a loss of jobs, an abandoned mill in the heart of its downtown, a decaying old railroad station, empty parking lots, increasing numbers of large trucks on its roads, a recycling facility adjacent to its canal and the Connecticut River, not to mention apathy, disenchantment and discord—it is an unusually long list of problems for a small town of only 12,500 residents.

How does the past define who we are today? 

Are Windsor Locks’ current difficulties the consequences of decisions made by the community or were other larger forces at play that sacrificed local interests in favor of special interests and misguided policies? Did costly state road and highway projects serve the town or eviscerate it?

If there are answers to these questions, they will likely be found in an extensive documentary record consisting primarily of dozens of newspaper articles from the Hartford Courant Archives as well as state agency and legislative materials.

This blog will survey the historical evidence chronicling the years just preceding World War II and the decades that followed. I will publish the documents as I find them. They are not in chronological order, because the process of research is not an orderly undertaking.

The first three documents include:

• A 1975 article by Michael Reich published in the journal, Planning (PDF file). The article examines the long series of conflicts between the towns of Windsor Locks and Suffield over the expansion of Bradley Airport and the key players on each side.
• An excerpt from a 2004 interview with William Huebner (PDF file). Mr. Huebner was a reporter for the Hartford Times, chairman of the Windsor Locks Economic and Industrial Development Commission and director of public affairs for the Connecticut Road Builders Association. The Connecticut Road Builders Association is a division of the Connecticut Construction Industries Association. (In the Reich article, Mr. Huebner is described as the director of communications for the Connecticut Construction Industries Association.)
• A history of I-484 from the website Connecticut Roads, which can be viewed by clicking on the link www.kurumi.com/roads/ct/i484/html  (please see the 10th paragraph). In 1968 the State Highway Department approved a plan to create a highway (later designated Interstate 484), which would have connected Interstates 84 and 91 via Bushnell Park, Pulaski Circle and the existing Whitehead Highway in Hartford. This was similar to a 1947 plan proposed by Francis S. Murphy, known as the “Murphy Plan.” Mr. Murphy was the influential publisher of the Hartford Times and chairman of the Connecticut Aeronautics Commission. As the Murphy Plan indicates, the Hartford Times publisher also took an interest in road and highway planning in Connecticut.

When reviewing the documents the reader should bear two things in mind: First, it is advisable to wait until all the research is complete before drawing any conclusions. The individual documents must be set beside one another and examined as a whole in order to obtain an overview and understanding of what happened and why.

Second, the six decades between 1940 and 2000 during which the documents were created must be viewed against the backdrop of the prevailing zeitgeist (the general trend of thought and feeling of an era), as well as the hard-scrabble existence of most Americans during the first three decades of the 20th century, followed by the calamity of the Great Depression in the 1930s.