‘A major catastrophe’
New Hartford building devastated by fire is regarded as the ‘center’ of town
The fast-moving fire that gutted the historic New Hartford House early Tuesday morning left saddened residents pondering what will happen at the most iconic property in town.
After standing more than 120 years as the centerpiece of New Hartford’s little village center, the big three-story building was left a smoldering hulk with only the brick façade and wooden clocktower intact.
“That was a place people knew. A small town like this losing a building like that is a major catastrophe,” said Jim Chakulski, a longtime New Hartford resident who watched smoke trails still rising from the wreckage late Tuesday morning.
“Everybody in town looks at it as the center of New Hartford. You’ll see that building on postcards going all the way back,” said Anne Hall, the town historian.
The New Hartford House dominated a full corner in the town center, with storefronts along Bridge Street and a clocktower facing Route 44 along with the wooden balcony running the length of the second floor. The various design elements carried a mix of 19th-century New England mill town and Old West saloon, along with a dash of Disney playfulness with the clocktower.
People from the Farmington
Valley and the Northwest Corner came to the firstfloor restaurant and bar, known from 1990 to 2017 as Chatterly’s. Late Tuesday morning, it was mostly New Hartford people who gathered on Main Street — some bringing chairs — to watch firefighters douse the remaining hot spots.
“Chatterly’s was like Cheers, where everybody knows your name,” said Don Petruzzi, who played piano there for 10 years. “The bartender Carmen Samele, he was the owner’s brother, gave me my first gig in 2007. He’s the one who gave me the name Donny the Piano Man. I made a lot of friends there.”
“It’s a crying shame this building is going to have to get knocked down,” Petruzzi said as he watched inspectors examining the brick façade.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the town was giving no indication of whether the brick wall and clock tower would be demolished. Fire Marshal Robert Diorio expected the investigation would take time; several investigators from the state police, including arson specialist Paul Makuc, were working with him.
The fire was reported around 2:20 a.m.; arriving firefighters found the entire roof in flames. Firefighters from nearly 30 departments were called either to work at the scene or stand by at other firehouses, and crews came from as far as Bantam, Litchfield and West Hartford, Diorio said.
As many as 100 firefighters worked at the scene during some point in the night, officials said.
Tenants from 16 apartments were safely evacuated, and the half-dozen first-floor businesses were empty at the time. But a 26-year-old Burlington firefighter suffered what Chief Michael Boucher called “a medical emergency,” and was taken to John Dempsey Hospital in critical condition. Boucher withheld the firefighter’s name and provided no other details.
Tenant Eric Holda recalled waking up to the sound of someone yelling.
“My windows were bright from all the flames I guess. I walked out to the back deck and looked to the left and all three fire escapes — wooden — were completely on fire,” said Holda, who said he was able to hobble out despite a broken leg from a recent accident. “Good thing that kid was yelling ‘fire, get out, fire’ because I would never have woken up.
“I just had a blanket wrapped around me, I had no clothing. Some girl gave me a pair of flip flops, and some kid gave me shorts and a shirt,” Holda said, looking across Bridge Street to where his secondfloor apartment had been destroyed.
As people walked down Main Street to view the wreckage late Tuesday morning, many talked about birthday parties, anniversaries or other milestones they’d marked at the restaurant, which was Paul’s Cafe and Yesterdays for years before the late Paul Samele Jr. redesigned it as Chatterly’s.
Several residents said they’d heard that in the 1800s, the New Hartford House might have hosted a prostitution business, but Hall said historical research showed no evidence of that.
“It was certainly a lively place where everybody in town went. It had a billiards hall and a dance floor, and it would have been a fairly rowdy crowd,” she said. “From the 1960s till 1981 it was painted pink and known as the Pink Hotel, and I think that helped play into the colorful reputation.”
That’s not the only myth about the building. Town land records indicate it was constructed in 1850, but Hall said what exists now is what was rebuilt from the original after an 1897 fire.
“The fire destroyed the original wooden hotel, and it was rebuilt as the brick structure that burned today,” she said. “But there’s been a continuous hotel and tavern there since the 1700s. There was a stagecoach stop there in 1799. In the 1700s and 1800s it was a hotel in the sense of a boarding house — some people were just there overnight, some were residents for six months or a year.”
The Greenfield Co. was a large textile business in town at the time, with a railroad siding serving its mill and a workforce of more than 700. The hotel was home for some of those employees, Hall said.
“Then in the 20th century it changed to being apartments,” she said, but noted that it never lost its standing as the town’s primary landmark. “You could always say the New Hartford House and people would know where that was.”