West Boulevard Historic District

The area where West Boulevard is located in Hartford's Southwest was in the late 19th century the country estate of Horace Fox, the owner of a local lumber company. It was one of the West End's last areas of open space. Fox began considering plans for development of the land as early as 1896, when period maps show proposed routes for West Boulevard. In line with the ideas of the City Beautiful movement, Fox envisioned a broad parkway extending from Prospect Avenue in the West to Forest Street in the East. Of this vision, only the western portion was actually implemented. West Boulevard was laid out from Prospect to South Whitney Street as a four-lane boulevard with a broad central median, with shade trees planted in the median and on the flanking sides. Fox sold off house lots in the 1910s and 1920s, mainly to developers, who then built houses and sold them to generally upwardly mobile residents.^[2]

The historic district encompasses those blocks of West Boulevard, as well as about 1/2 Block North of West Boulevard on Rodney Street, which was also built out at the same time. The houses are generally unified by their scale and setback from the road, and by their wood frame construction. Stylistically they are also quite similar, with most built in the then-fashionable Colonial Revival style. Most of them were built by the development firm of Freeburg, Erickson, and Felth, and have no architect credited in city records. Andrew Freeburg, one of the principals in the firm, lived and had his principal place of business at West Boulevard and South Whitney Street.^[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Hartford, Connecticut