The first Park Street Festival was held in 1977 on Sunday, June 5th. It was organized by the Hartford Areas Rally Together coalition. The festival always had a cultural component which changed along with the changing demographic of the neighborhood: from French-Canadian, to Portuguese, to Puerto Rican, and more. The basics of the festival looked much the same throughout the years, but its scale grew leading into the eighties. Unfortunately, in the four years leading up to its cancellation in 1990, the festival stood on an unsteady financial foundation. The Park Street Festival lives on today in its influence on Hartford's Puerto Rican Festival.

The corner of Park and Lawrence St, where a stage was erected for the festival

The Park Street Festival was designed to celebrate Frog Hollow and its residents, but it attracted all sorts of people: it could be expected to draw in over 20,000 guests. The whole two miles of Park Street would be dedicated to vendors, performers, and more. For example, here, at the intersection of Lawrence and Park Street, stood one of the two stages on which bands entertained guests at the Park Street Festival of 1986. The festival ended by the 1990s.

Park Street Festival

The Frog Hollow Community Spaces Tour visits eight different locations notable for their impact on community members. These are places for creation, shopping, worship - anywhere that community building takes place. This tour has a particular focus on archival materials, but the choice of locations was highly influenced by Frog Hollow residents.

Construction on the recreation center was completed in November of 1996, but it took years to get to that point. The project had first been proposed over five years earlier with the goal of providing Frog Hollow children with a safe space in which to spend their free time. Parents worried about gang violence and drug use, so they advocated for the center. From the start, the project was spearheaded by community members who worked with city hall to allocate funding. The building was designed by architect James Vance, and was named after Samuel Valentin Arroyo, a 22 year-old who was killed in a drive-by shooting two years prior to the 1995 naming resolution.

The Samuel V. Arroyo Recreational Center, also known as the Pope Park Recreational Center houses a gymnasium, weight lifting room, pool, game room, and kitchen. The center can be rented out and has been used as a venue for city-wide events in the past, but most of the time it serves as a space for the youth of Frog Hollow to hang out, exercise, and learn.

Samuel V. Arroyo Recreational Center

The "Love Your Block" Program provided the City of Hartford with a $1,000 grant in order to create The Art Box Lot. The project began in April 2019 with communicating with the residents of Frog Hollow about what they would like to see in such a space. Many community members even helped construct the lot, building garden boxes and installing benches. Lindaluz Carrillo and Mina Elise created the first mural which has since been painted over. New murals are being installed all the time, with the most recent one painted in April 2022 as part of the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival.

The Art Box Lot occupies a formerly vacant lot on Park Street. The space features a community garden, a projector wall for film screenings, and most notably, several large murals. Each of the murals have been designed by local artists and they celebrate the history and diversity of Frog Hollow. The Art Box Lot also frequently collaborates with nonprofits and other organizations to hold events.

The Art Box Lot

Construction on El Mercado began in 1976, funded through a series of grants from the state. The Broad-Park Development Corporation spearheaded the project. El Mercado was preceded by other development around Park Street, making room for several new businesses. The building replaced a vacant lot. A local merchant's association expressed doubt about the project, insisting that the area had enough food stores as is, but together with the Broad-Park Development Corporation, they managed to come to compromises.El Mercado is a way for people to connect to their cultures. For example, artist Constanza Segovia speaks of how seeing Argentinian foods for sale at El Mercado helped create a connection between her as an Argentinian and the wider city of Hartford.

El Mercado is a grocery store and marketplace selling produce, herbs, spices, and more. Many of these ingredients are foods that you won't find at the average Stop and Shop. In addition to being a supermarket, there is a food court with four different restaurants inside the building. These include El Tepeyac, a Mexican restaurant, Antojitos Colombianos, which serves Colombian food, El Gran Dominicano, both Dominican and Puerto Rican, and a Peruvian restaurant, Autentico Sabor Peruano.

El Mercado

The first version of the Park Library opened in 1928 on Park Street. In 1939, it moved to Broad Street, until 1975 when it moved back to Park Street. Finally, in the fall of 2021, the library took up residence at the site of the Lyric Theater, which was an old theater and film house that opened almost one hundred years ago in 1923. The historic building was unfortunately demolished, but architects incorporated features of the Lyric within the library, including reproductions of murals inside the theater. The branch's upgrade has been a long time coming; for over 25 years, Frog Hollow residents have advocated for an expansion. For the Park Street Library @ The Lyric to exist as it does today is a resounding victory for (and by!) the community.

The Park Street Library @ The Lyric is the largest of the seven Hartford Public Library branches. It provides all the services that a typical library would: internet access, printing, and of course, checking out books. Graciela Rivera is the current manager of the Park Street library branch, and she played a pivotal role in its opening.

The Park Street Library @ The Lyric

Prior to its move to its current location on Broad Street, Templo Fe took up tentative residence on Main Street. This was in 1975, when Puerto Ricans in Frog Hollow were a relatively new presence. Many of the existing residents did not want the church to move to Broad Street, citing a predicted increase in traffic and housing costs. Templo Fe members, among others, suspected that the true reason for their disapproval was because the majority of Templo Fe's congregation was, and is, Puerto Rican. City Council accepted the request to move, however, and the church found a new home in what was once an abandoned school, due very much in part to Reverend Ramirez's efforts.

Templo Fe is a church of the Pentecostal denomination founded by Pastor Julie Ramirez. Reverend Roberto Calcaño is the current pastor, who took over as Senior Pastor following Reverend Ramirez's death in 2016. He spent years learning under her guidance prior to this. The church offers services multiple days a week in Spanish. They also have their own radio program which broadcasts every Saturday morning at 9:00 at 100.1 FM.

Templo Fe

In 1994, two cars sped down Vernon Street in a gang-related car chase, culminating in an on-foot conflict and the eventual arrest of the two gang members. Despite being a public street, Vernon ran right through Trinity College's campus, so it naturally caused quite a shock to the school. Suddenly, though, the rhetoric turned to an issue of "traffic safety", and within four months of the chase, the iron fence down Broad Street was extended to close off Vernon Street, with three traffic bollards preventing access by car. Frog Hollow residents, students, and faculty alike still argue about the true motive for the blockade, but its restricting effect remains the same regardless.

This rather imposing looking iron fence separates Vernon Street from Broad Street. It stretches several blocks down Broad Street, only ending at the edge of campus. Although Trinity College's campus is technically open to the public, very few Hartford residents ever enter. The fence is a physical and symbolic gesture that creates a barrier between the surrounding community and the college.

Trinity College's Fence on Vernon Street

Before it became The Learning Corridor, the sixteen acre space consisted of an abandoned lot originally used for parking buses. Frog Hollow residents had wanted the dangerous brownfield removed for years. The president of Trinity College at the time, Evan Dobelle, proposed the ambitious Learning Corridor in partnership with SINA. In the wake of the Sheff v. O'Neill court decision ordering schools in the Hartford area to desegregate, magnet schools offered a solution. Funding came mainly from donations from private companies, but large percentages were contributed by the institutions making up SINA. Construction was completed in 2000, and the Learning Corridor opened to the public in 2001.

The Learning Corridor is a collection of four magnet schools located on one campus - The Montessori Magnet School, the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, the Greater Hartford Academy of Math and Science, and Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. The corridor also includes a theater, family center, and the Hartford Boys and Girls Club.

Frog Hollow Community Spaces

Park Street Festival

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources