Historic Sites
A short distance eastward was Joseph Bishop's tobacco warehouse and factory. South of Bishop's Corner was the Trout Brook Ice and Feed Company, located on the north side of Farmington Avenue. The company was an important ice cutting and shipping industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Talcott Woolen Yarn Mill and Vine Hill Farm, on Quaker Lane South near Trout Brook, and the Old Grist Mill, located west of North Main Street, were the local yarn and corn mills that were operated for many years in the 1700s and 1800s by the Morgan and Goodwin families.
Thomas O'Hara Goodwin operated his pottery shop at the intersection of New Britain and New Park Avenues.
The Old West School, now the West Hartford Art League at the corner of Mountain and Buena Vista Roads, was built in 1878 and is one of the first brick school houses as part of Henry Barnard's campaign for safer school buildings. Nearby is the Buena Vista Historic District.
Residents of West Hartford met at the First Three Meeting Houses of the First Church of Christ, Congregational, which were built in 1712, 1744 and 1834 on the northwest corner of Farmington Avenue and North Main Street. Some residents of this time came from affluent families. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt built a huge mansion for his son on West Hill Drive, formerly known as Vanderbilt Hill. Today West Hill is a community of architecturally distinguished, 20th-century homes.
West Hartford's first modern subdivision (1896) is detailed in a sign noting the Boulevard-Raymond Road Historic District between South Main Street and Trout Brook. The Metropolitan District Reservoir No. 1, on the north side of Farmington Avenue west of Sunset Farm Road, was opened in 1867 to supply pure water to homes in Hartford and West Hartford. Reservoir No. 1 is the oldest component of the present regional water system.
The historic signs were made possible through a joint venture with Town of West Hartford, the Architectural Heritage Committee and former Town Historian Nelson Burr.
