At a crossroads
Nearly century-old G. Fox & Co. footbridge in Hartford faces uncertainty ahead of attached warehouse demolition
The historic footbridge over Talcott Street in downtown Hartford once connected the mighty G. Fox & Co. department store with its warehouse and remains a surviving link to the past when Main Street was a shopping destination for central Connecticut.
But the future of the nearly century-old footbridge is uncertain.
Plans call for demolition of the old warehouse — converted to a parking garage in the 1980s — to clear the way for future development on the site. Tearing down the parking garage, which has been closed for several years because it was deemed unsafe, would mean the bridge also would have to come down.
Preservationists say though the neoclassical bridge is tucked into a corner of downtown that is not heavily traveled, it is an architectural gem. The bridge is clad in copper with paneled pilasters, with a clock face on the second story and stepped parapet and is part of a historic district that once was Hartford’s department store row.
“That footbridge is one of a kind, and how many more one-of-a-kind things do we have to lose in Hartford?” Mary E. Falvey, executive director of the Hartford Preservation Alliance said.
“Think of the thousands of employees that went back and forth on that pedestrian bridge to the warehouse. It’s not just sentimental. This is such a unique artifact.”
— Mary E. Falvey, executive director of the Hartford Preservation Alliance
Falvey worries the footbridge will be dismantled, stored away and forgotten about, unless there is some plan for a future use. The alliance’s first choice, she says, would be for the bridge to stay where it was originally built in the 1930s.
“It belongs to the G. Fox building, and this is our last little placekeeper,” Falvey said. “Think of the thousands of employees that went back and forth on that pedestrian bridge to the warehouse. It’s not just sentimental. This is such a unique artifact.”
The loss of historic structures in the city is a sensitive subject. In the past, buildings were often torn down for redevelopment, only to become parking lots for years, even decades. The footbridge was on the preservation alliance’s 2020 list of top 10 endangered properties in Hartford.
Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC of Brooklyn, New York, downtown’s largest commercial landlord, took control of the Talcott Street parking garage in 2018.
As part of a larger agreement with the city involving other properties it owns, Shelbourne agreed to demolish the garage, with the intent of building a new one. The garage would be the first step toward a future development of housing and shops.
The city originally required Shelbourne to move ahead with demolition by the end of last year. But that deadline is expected to be extended as the city’s historic preservation commission considers backing a demolition permit.
In a statement, Shelbourne says it believes the footbridge is worth saving, if feasible, and it has commissioned a study to determine how the bridge could be reused as part of a new development on the site, perhaps at an entrance off Main Street. However, the task was not part of its agreement with the city.
Shelbourne said the challenges to saving the bridge are many.
The bridge has not been maintained in recent years, and a piece of copper actually fell off in the past few years. The cladding is more ornamental than structural, covering up what is basically a concrete bridge. And it is connected to two buildings, one of which — the former G. Fox building on the southern side — Shelbourne does not own.
“This is one of those tricky situations where you have dual imperatives of preserving a piece of Hartford’s history and making sure we can build for the future on a centrally located, strategically important site,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said.
Bronin said the footbridge should be preserved, whether incorporated into new construction on the site or elsewhere in the city.
“If the preservation of that footbridge at its current location is not feasible, then I think we also have to recognize that putting that entire burden for coming up with a plan on the new owners of that site could also disadvantage the city, which needs to see new development in that location,” Bronin said.
Bronin said “multiple stakeholders” must come together to figure out a plan, raising the question of just how such a project would be funded.
The Talcott Street site, which encompasses the garage, office space above it and a parking lot, runs along Talcott Street between Main and Market streets. A new garage on the Market Street side could help ease a future parking crunch as surface lots just to the north are developed as part of Downtown North, Bronin has said.
Shelbourne said there is no firm timeline for redevelopment once demolition is complete. The pandemic, Shelbourne said, has further complicated planning for the site.
“Given the economic conditions of the Hartford CBD [central business district] and the devastating effects of COVID on businesses, it is impossible to forecast when a viable plan would happen,” Shelbourne said.
Andrew Walsh, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford and an urban historian, said the debate over the footbridge illustrates the tension between preservation and development. But that tension is deepened when preservation does not necessarily bring a significant economic boost to a project.
“No one would want to go out of their way to get rid of it,” Walsh said. “It’s our little slice of Venice. Unfortunately, if two buildings are holding it up, and one is going away — the idea that you are going to figure out how to support that bridge for a long period of time temporarily seems to be a big reach to me.”
The historic preservation commission has asked Shelbourne for more information on its efforts and options for preserving the footbridge. The commission will again take up the demolition at its February meeting.