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  • 90 mins Driving
  • Hartford

Find animals, allegorical creatures, mythological beings and river boat pilots!

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Stop #1: Corning Fountain

John Massey Rhind

John Massey Rhind's 1899 Corning Fountain depicts four Saukiog Indian warriors, natives of central Connecticut at the time of the foundation of Hartford.

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Stop #2: Nathan Hale, Capitol Lobby

Karl Gerhardt

Nathan Hale by Karl Gerhardt was the winner of a competition started by the State of Connecticut. The statue is housed inside the Capitol’s first floor corridor. The statue is supposed to convey the emotions of the moments leading up to Hale's death by hanging.

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Stop #3: Capitol Sculpture, North Facade: Early Colonial Connecticut and Founding Fathers

Herbert Adams, Hermon Atkins MacNeil, Paul Wayland Bartlett, Richard E. Brooks

The North Façade of the Capitol Building depicts early prominent figures of Connecticut’s history. The statues represent the earliest period of Connecticut’s history beginning in the 16th century, and the portrait medallions represent a later era of American history, the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Stop #4: Spirit of Victory

Evelyn Beatrice Longman

Evelyn Longman's 1926 Spirit of Victory is in Bushnell Park near intersection of Elm & Trinity Streets. It commemorates the patriotism and valor of Hartford men who served during the Spanish War of 1898. The bronze figure is an allegory of Victory that harkens back to Hellenistic Greek traditions of remembrance.

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Stop #5: Stone Field, 1977

Carl Andre

Stone Field by Carl Andre was inspired by monoliths in Great Britain and across the street in Center Church Cemetery. The thirty six boulders are made of sandstone, brownstone, granite, schist, gneiss, basalt, and serpentine. They are arranged in a way so that no stone looks like the stone lying next to it.

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Stop #6: Stegosaurus, 1973

Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder’s painted steel sculpture from 1973, Stegosaurus, stands at the Burr Mall in between the Wadsworth Atheneum and City Hall in downtown Hartford. The work is a culmination of a sixty-six year project that began with a grant to the city of Hartford by Ella Burr McManus to build a memorial for her father.

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Stop #7: Samuel Colt Monument

John Massey Rhind

The monument to Samuel Colt, the first industrial tycoon in Hartford and inventor of the Colt Revolver, marks the entrance to Colt Park. John Massey Rhind was commissioned to complete the monument in 1905 by Elizabeth Jarvis Colt in memory of her husband who died at the age of 47.

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Stop #8: USS Hartford Cannon, 1858; Civil War Memorial of Trinity College, 1950

USS Hartford

The First African-American to win the Congressional Medal of Honor manned these cannons on the USS Hartford, the Union flagship of the fleet of Admiral Farragut that defeated the Confederate navy at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. The cannons were brought to the Trinity campus in 1950 to be the college's Civil War Memorial.

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Stop #9: Handful

Woolsey McAlpine Johnson

Trinity College alum Wolsey Johnson created Handful, a large sculpture constructed of arching steel beams that are welded together. On the sculpture's completion, Johnson gifted his piece to his alma mater where it has remained on campus since 1977.

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Stop #10: Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #849: Irregular Blobs of Color, 1998

Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #849: Irregular Blobs of Color, from 1998, was placed on indefinite loan to Trinity College due to the artists’ long association with the Vernon Social building’s architect, Tai Soo Kim. Lewitt also had a personal association with the campus and its neighborhood, having grown up nearby.

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Stop #11: Doctor Gallaudet and His First Deaf Mute Pupil

Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French's 1924 sculpture of Doctor Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was commissioned by the National Association for the Deaf to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American School for the Deaf. The West Hartford monument is a second casting of French's 1889 bronze original which is at Gallaudet College in Washington D.C.

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Find animals, allegorical creatures, mythological beings and river boat pilots!

Spanish War Monument, by Evelyn B. Longman, 1927, eagle head detail

The Stops

Starting at stop #1, this Driving tour is miles long.

Select a stop to start the tour and learn more:

  1. Corning Fountain
  2. Nathan Hale, Capitol Lobby
  3. Capitol Sculpture, North Facade: Early Colonial Connecticut and Founding Fathers
  4. Spirit of Victory
  5. Stone Field, 1977
  6. Stegosaurus, 1973
  7. Samuel Colt Monument
  8. USS Hartford Cannon, 1858; Civil War Memorial of Trinity College, 1950
  9. Handful
  10. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #849: Irregular Blobs of Color, 1998
  11. Doctor Gallaudet and His First Deaf Mute Pupil