A $3 million restoration of the pond at the Connecticut park is expected to become visible to the visiting public next week as fences come down
It’s just in time for the annual Eversource Hartford Marathon on Saturday at Hartford’s Bushnell Park.
“It will be such a nice way to showcase the pond with so many people coming from all over,” Morgan Fippinger, executive director of the Bushnell Park Conservancy, said, as she gave visitors a recent sneak peak of the pond, hidden from view for six months by sheathed fencing.
“Hopefully the grass is just sturdy enough, and I’ll be out of here sort of ‘Watch out for the grass!’ ” Fippinger said, as a half-dozen sprinklers drenched a large swath of newly-planted grass around the pond, efforts aided by generous rainfall the previous week. “It’s not so much the tents, but the trucks. It’s the trucks.”
The marathon makes ample use of Bushnell Park — considered the crown jewel of Hartford’s extensive park system — and is one of a growing list of major events in the park in recent decades. They include the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz, First Night Hartford, Festival del Coquí, and more recently, the Capitol Groove music festival.
The large events — often drawing tens of thousands to Bushnell Park — are seen as an economic boon to local downtown shops, restaurants and bars.
But they can also take an often unseen toll on the park.
“The biggest challenge is truly reducing the impact of the really big events,” Fippinger said. “The big events are important. They’re critical to Hartford’s economy. And the message that we want to send to people is that we want them to feel really comfortable in Bushnell Park. But after 100,000 people are here for a weekend, how do you bring it back to the point where the people who walk their dogs are experiencing the park that they want?”
The answer to that question is not an easy one, Fippinger said, but it will be critical to the park’s long-term survival, particularly for its signature trees, some of them dating back to the park’s opening in the 1860s.
“We have to care for the park so that 100 years from now there are still the beautiful trees and concerts and things like that,” Fippinger said.
When Bushnell Park opened, its 37 acres were home to 1,100 trees, a number that fell to about 200 in the early 1990s. Since then, a concerted effort to strengthen the tree canopy has bolstered the number to 480, a little less than half of them are original to the park.
Still, concerns remain — especially for the trees on the park’s western end, near the Performance Pavilion, added to the park in 1995. Trees in the area have suffered from “root compaction” caused by pressure from above, not so much from foot traffic but vehicles carrying heavy equipment necessary for concerts, Fippinger said.
In the past two years, four trees in the area needed to be cut down, partly from age but largely from root compaction. Compaction is a hardening of soil caused by pressure that squeezes out pockets, reducing air and water movement needed to plant root growth and health.
“Even though it seems counterintuitive, we encourage people to keep their cars on the sidewalk because a lot of people pull off so people can walk, which is very considerate,” Fippinger said. “And, we don’t want people not to be on sidewalks, either. So, it’s all part of it.”
Conservancy’s stronger role
The nonprofit conservancy was formed in 1981 by a group of citizens worried about a park where the landscape and sculptures were falling into decline. Originally the Bushnell Park Foundation, it took the conservancy name in 2023. Since its founding, the organization has raised $9 million to restore some of its most famous landmarks, including the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, erected in 1886 as a tribute to Hartford residents who served in the country’s Civil War.
The conservancy has taken over the operations of the popular Carousel and Pump House Gallery, both major attractions.
Although the city owns and maintains the park, the conservancy’s decision to hire Fippinger in July as its first executive director signals the organization’s desire to take a larger role in seeking out grants and technical support for the care of the park and its structures.
Fippinger is a staff of one supported by college interns, bringing with her experience from The Carousel Museum in Bristol and the New Britain Museum of American Art. She does marshal an army of volunteers for jobs based on recommendations from the city. Last week, volunteers from the Travelers Cos. and Voya Financial mulched trees to insulate their roots against the cold of winter.
In addition to the pond project, the city has made some recent significant improvements in the park. This year, the city invested $5 million in new pathways and lighting.
Looking ahead, the city has allocated $50,000 to study needed repairs on the park’s bronze-and-granite Corning Fountain, a gift to the city in 1899 in memory of a prominent local merchant. Potential future projects include restoration of the memorial arch and its adjoining bridge that forms part of Trinity Street, plus lighting upgrades at the Pavilion. Each is expected to run into the millions of dollars.
The iQuilt Partnership, which strives to make Hartford more walkable and better link together cultural and historical attractions, is seeking $6 million in a state Community Investment Fund grant to upgrade and make skating rink a more permanent structure. The rink is a focal point of Winterfest, now in its 15th year at the park.
Fippinger said she does not envision major additions to the park, but she does see the need for permanent restrooms and water-bottle filling stations. Currently, the park has just one water fountain.
“If we had all the money and the resources in the world, we wouldn’t be building new, really visually different amenities — visually the park would be still be the same,” Fippinger said. “We just are going to care for things. There will, of course, be some improvements that need to be made, like to the skating rink.”
‘Can’t leave the park’
For decades, the immediate area around Bushnell Park has been seen as ripe for housing, but the development has unfolded slowly.
The views on an urban green space were likely at least part of the inspiration of the 27-story, Bushnell Tower, completed in 1969 and designed by noted architect I.M. Pei. In the early 2000s, there was the conversion of the former SNET building on Trumbull Street and a new apartment building, Trumbull on the Park — now, Spectra on the Park. Both capitalized on views of Bushnell Park.
The next wave of apartments, however, boosted by low-cost loans from the Capital Region Development Authority, is already bringing the promise of hundreds of new rentals to the area.
The 55 Elm Club — a $67 million conversion of a historic building on Pulaski Circle across from the Park — is among the first to come up for leasing. The 160-unit project will hold a grand opening Tuesday.
So far, according to developer Spinnaker Real Estate Partners of South Norwalk, 26 units have been leased. Rents range from $1,440 a month for a studio to $2,695 for a two-bedroom, according to the apartment building’s web site. Fees aren’t included in the rents. Rents for three-bedroom units weren’t available.
Also underway are is the $52 million conversion of two, historic buildings on Trinity Street into 104 apartments.
One of 55 Elm Club’s new tenants is Fabian Parra, who was walking his dog Khloe, a chihuahua, on a recent afternoon in the park.
Parra, who is moving from another apartment building bordering the park, said he looked elsewhere at rentals that weren’t near the park.
“At the end, I was like, ‘I can’t leave the park,’ ” Parra said. “It’s like, it’s really grown on me, and I’m attached to it. So now, I’m moving from one side of the park to the other.”
Parra said he enjoys watching the seasons change and the convenience of just walking across the street. His running club meets in the park once a week, spring through the fall.
“I can throw down a blanket, enjoy the weather or the scene,” Parra said. “Khloe has a place to play, and it’s such a big backyard for her.”
‘Acquaintance through the eyes’
Bushnell Park is seen as a tremendous asset today.
But when the park was first proposed in the 1850s by its namesake Horace Bushnell, a prominent Hartford minister, the land was a jumble of rundown tenements with a river running through it polluted by waste from nearby tanneries.
The idea for a Victorian “strolling park” quickly gained support, and Hartford voters backed spending $105,000 from the city treasury — $3.7 million in today’s dollars — to purchase property. Hartford became the first city in country to spend public funds to establish a public park.
The land acquisition deal also was one of the first to use eminent domain.
Peter Baldwin, a retired professor of history at the University of Connecticut, said Bushnell’s vision for the park came at a turbulent time in American history when the nation was deeply divided along the lines of religion and race.
“His idea around the park was that this was going to be a place where everybody should come together,” Baldwin said. “Not deliberately, but just in the passage of their normal day. Remember, it was a pretty small city, so a lot of people were walking to get around.”
“So, in his imagination, you would be meeting all sorts of people, just casually, just passing them by, not even talking to them, making acquaintance through the eyes,” Baldwin said. “And this would give them a sense that there was a world outside of their own little social niche, their own religious niche. And it would give them a sense of being one people.”
The park was designed by Swiss-born architect Jacob Weidenmann, who worked with Bushnell on the plans. Those plans included 157 varieties of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs from North America, Europe and eastern Asia.
And unlike New York City’s Central Park, designed by Weidenmann’s mentor, Hartford native Frederick Law Olmsted, the park is not bounded by high walls to block out the city.
“That wasn’t Bushnell’s thinking,” Baldwin said. “He was really hoping that people outside the park would just walk in and would feel invited in, seeing all the other people walking around enjoying themselves.”
What later became known as the Park River was a landscape amenity for decades after Bushnell Park opened to the public. But in the 1940s, the section of river in the park was part of a larger project to bury the river underground in a massive conduit, following disastrous floods a decade earlier. In the 1936 flood, the entire park was submerged.
In 1943, an artificial pond was created near Jewell Street with brownstone walls that recalled the serpentine path where the river once flowed. This year’s restoration included a major dredging and installation of a liner — similar to a pool — new rocks on the liner, an updated aeration system and the ability to drain the pond, if necessary.
“I’ve never said this to anybody, but I would love to see us do the little remote-control boat races like they do in Central Park,” Fippinger said. “Wouldn’t that be fun? Little sailboats in there.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com