Time marches on, and Connecticut is left behind

bicyle touring hartford

Reader Sensei has, with his usual genius, dredged up a video from the early or perhaps mid-60s extolling the virtues of Connecticut as a place to relocate. Viewing all 20 + minutes, it's astonishing, and dispiriting to see how almost everything touted in the film has disappeared. Hartford, which back then was "the insurance capitol of the world" was already a deserted wasteland after 5 pm when I lived here in 1978-81, and now those companies are gone forever, and almost all the manufacturers and corporations featured in the promotional are long gone. The brass industry along the Housatanic? Silver in Woodbury? Eagle Pencils in Danbury? Fuller Brush and Stanley Tools in New Britain? Gone forever, either disappeared or moved out of state.

Wilton's Norden, Stamford's Cyanamid, Revlon. Dorr Oliver, Yale Lock, and so forth: all gone. Their replacements: UBS (which swallowed Greenwich Capital) and RBS, and Tudor Capital,  are going, fast, and I see nothing coming in to replace them. Check out the video for a depressing view of what once was.

Connecticut  is destined to return to being a tobacco leaf provider and vacation spot for New Yorkers and Boston weekenders. The good news for Greenwich homeowners is that, for so long as NYC remains a financial center, we can continue to offer a wonderful place for that industry's top earners to live in and raise a family. When New York succeeds in driving out its Golden Goose, which it seems determined to do, there will be no one able to afford to buy our houses at their current prices.

I may have to switch my focus on representing buyers to sellers who want to get out while the getting's good.