The last chance to check out the market on Spruce St is this Wednesday from 4:30-7:30 p.m. Northwest Park will host the fall markets in September and October.

 

 

April showers have done the work.  Enjoy the May flowers,  and find something interesting and/or fun to do in Manchester.

 

Here is the link to the May Calendar:

My Calendar

 

This will be my last post about Manchester for a while.  We are going on a 6-week adventure to visit National and State Parks in other states.  I won’t be publishing a June Calendar.  If you want to follow our trip, I hope to post on this blog using the category Travel Away from Manchester. 

 

After the winter that wasn’t, spring is early, and there is beauty in Manchester this April. Check out the calendar to find something fun in Manchester this month.

My Calendar

On a cool and cloudy Sunday in early March, Town Historian, Susan Barlow, led a group of about 100 people on a history walk down Main St in Manchester.

The first stop was the Bennet Apartments. Formerly Bennet High School and Manchester High School. The architectural firm responsible for the design of the building was Hartwell, Richardson & Driver, the successor firm of H.H Richardson. The style is colonial revival and includes doric columns at the entry and syncopated bricks at the corners. The building was paid for by the Cheney family and opened in 1904. The last graduating class was in 1956, when the new high school opened. The building continued as a junior high school for decades but was converted to senior apartments in 1984.

 

Across the street from the old high school was Educational Square, a quadrangle of buildings built beginning in 1914, which today is Bennet Academy.

Before the Educational Square, the Ninth District School was located on this site. It was a giant wooden pine building. It burned to the ground in October of 1913 with no deaths or significant injuries except to the principal, Miss Bennet. She returned to find some people who had not evacuated the building. Her scalp was burned, and in most pictures, you will see her wearing a hat, covering up what happened to her.

**** The Sculpture Project is raising money to erect a statue of Miss Bennet on Main St. in front of the school. Here is the link: https://manchester-ct.blog/2023/01/16/happy-birthday-elisabeth/    

Next, on the left, where it says Firestone, that used to be Watkins’s Furniture, and then it became Keith’s Furniture, and finally Pinewood Furniture, owned by the Firestone family. They still own it. And now it’s an art studio and cafe. It’s a great example of a building that was reused instead of being torn down. Unlike the north end of town, where buildings were demolished, many buildings downtown were saved and repurposed.

The Guinipero Family built these buildings on Main St. At one time, there was a bakery and a tavern. The family lived in the house, which is still a private home.

When many buildings on Main St. were initially built, the first floor was retail and had a huge plate glass window. And then upstairs, the second floor would house professional offices, dentists, doctors, and lawyers, and maybe a dressmaker would be up there. And then, on the top floors, apartments, and some of the apartments were quite grand, overlooking beautiful downtown Main Street in Manchester. Over the years, many of those apartments have been broken up into smaller places, and there’s not much retail in downtown Manchester. One building had the third floor removed, possibly to reduce the taxes.

This building was the Orford Hotel and later Marlow’s Department Store. When it was the Orford Hotel, there was a huge restaurant on the first floor, hotel rooms on the second floor, and a ballroom on the top floor. Most people on tour remembered Marlow’s and that you could buy anything there. Today you might have to search the farthest corners of the internet to find an item that, back in the day, you could just walk into Marlow’s and ask Mr. Marlow if they had it. There was a chance the thing might have a layer of dust on it, but it was most likely on a shelf somewhere. When Mr. Marlow sold the business, the remaining inventory was sold to the Vermont Country Store.

The final stop on the tour was the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church which used to be the State Theater. The church has been housed in this old theater since 1974. The theater opened in June 1925 and was for live theater with a large stage and an orchestra pit. In the 1940s, it was run by the Warner Brothers and became a movie theater. The church has kept the theater seats and sconces from that time. No pictures were allowed to be taken inside the theater. It is a beautiful building with a mezzanine and balcony.

Joe McCluskey (Olympic Medalist from Manchester) and his brother John were Irish Tenors who were paid to sing at the theater when they were teenagers.

**** You can learn more about Joe McCluskey and the first sculpture completed by the sculpture project here. https://manchester-ct.blog/2021/09/18/the-sculpture-project/

This year is Manchester’s Bicentennial.  Susan Barlow is leading 23 History walks to celebrate. More information is available here. http://www.manchesterhistory.org/Booklet23WalksWeb.pdf

 

 

Even during a snowstorm, they still need to eat.

Will March go out like a lamb?

It will be easy to keep busy in Manchester this March.  Here is the calendar with plenty of things to do.

My Calendar

Celebrate Elisabeth Bennet’s 142nd birthday on January 22, 2023, by donating to the Sculpture Project.

Manchester’s unique Sculpture Project is raising funds for a sculpture of Elisabeth Bennet. The Sculpture Project will place a statue of the visionary Manchester Educator on Main Street in front of Bennet School. The project aims to educate the citizens and visitors of Manchester about Manchester’s history and its famous residents.  

In celebration of the 142nd anniversary of her birth, the Sculpture Project is seeking donations of $14.20. Checks can be sent to:

If you prefer to pay by credit card, call The Manchester Historical Society at 860-647-9983.

 

For more information about the Sculpture Project, follow these links:

The Sculpture Project

The Sculpture Project Update