Richard Welling loved Hartford. He loved its classic 18th- and 19th-century architecture, buildings like the Old State House and the Connecticut State Capitol, but he also loved the soaring skyscrapers that began to transform the city during the latter part of the 20th century -- at least some of them. He admired “The play of light, shadow, texture, scale, and mood” in Constitution Plaza and claimed he got an exhilarated feeling every time he walked through it. It was a constant source of inspiration for him, a recurring subject that keeps appearing in his work through the years.
Urban renewal was something that Welling experienced first-hand. Between the 1950s and the 1990s, his studio was located in five different historic structures, four of which were torn down. He finally settled in Union Place in 1982, and remained there until his death in 2009. Union Place, located opposite Hartford’s train station, was one of the first successful attempts at adaptive re-use in the city, converting a shabby 1914 factory into apartments, shops, and restaurants. Welling’s studio looked out on the roofs of the station, another one of his favorite Hartford buildings that was undergoing renovations in the 1980s.
It was a period of excitement and hope, of optimism and tremendous idealism. In Welling’s drawings, Hartford can appear every bit as glamorous and romantic as New York. As time went on, he must have seen the changes in the city he loved -- the loss of population as people were displaced by urban renewal, or moved to the suburbs to escape a place that was increasingly perceived as dangerous; the emptying out of the downtown area after dark; and, ultimately, the loss of businesses and jobs, and increasing economic difficulty. Yet he never lost faith in Hartford. He thought the skyline just kept getting better and better; he delighted in the quirkiness of new buildings like One Corporate Center (the Stilts Building) and the Connecticut Natural Gas Building (constructed in 1978 and torn down in 2004).
To experience Richard Welling’s vision of Hartford and to learn more about urban renewal and historic preservation in the turbulent years of the late 20th century, visit (Re)Building Hartford: A City Captured by Artist Richard Welling, which will be on view at the Connecticut Historical Society through March 15, 2015. Separate satellite exhibitions at other locations throughout the city will further examine the impact of the built environment on its people’s lives.
