Tom Condon
New Britain — The decades after World War II were unkind to many Connecticut cities, New Britain among them. The Hardware City lost jobs, was carved up by highways and saw residents depart for the suburbs. Its once bustling downtown began to look desolate, almost like an archeological site. Not anymore. Downtown New Britain is steadily…
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By the middle of the last century, U.S. cities were showing their age. They had endured the Great Depression and World War II, two decades of deferred maintenance. They were losing residents and businesses to the suburbs. But a confident America, that had just turned German and Japanese cities to rubble, stepped up. Congress passed…
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Connecticut’s cities were the glories of their time. Handsome and self-reliant, well-built and functional, they were economic dynamos, often known by the products they made: The Hat City, Brass City, Silk City, etc. These cities made the state strong. And then the U.S. won World War II. Many cities hit their population peaks just after the war,…
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