Hartford Public High School
"The Second Oldest Secondary School in the United
States"
Since 1638
The Hartford Public High School History Project
About
- Fossil Collection
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of the H.P.H.S. Museum & Archive
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MassMutual Life Insurance Company and The Hartford Financial Group have each granted $2,000 to the Hartford Public High School History Project Archive Fund.
Alumni from the classes of 1936B up through 2003 have contributed separately and through the Friends of the HPHS Museum & Archive.
Thanks to the generosity of all of the above we have been able to clean and restore most of our oil paintings and framed engravings. They are on display in the Lewis Fox Memorial Library Media Center and HPHS Museum & Archive in the new school building on Forest Street.
The HPHS History Project is directed by a committee of twelve members, most of whom are alumni and active/retired faculty members. A support group of volunteers from the classes of 1953 and 1957 meet once a month in order to improve displays and maintain the collections in the Museum.
If you would like to visit the HPHS Museum, please contact R. J. Luke Williams by calling the school (695-1300) and leaving a message or by emailing him at <hphs55@aol.com>
During the 2nd Semester, 2007-2008, the students will be
given tours of the Museum. We would like to interest students in the possibilities of careers in
museum studies, and art
preservation and restoration.
An offshoot of the Project is the establishment of the "Friends of
the HPHS Museum & Archive," a group of retired and active
teachers, alumni, and others whose goals are to preserve and enhance the
HPHS historical collections.
Friends of the H.P.H.S. Museum & Archive
For many years, graduates, faculty, and friends in the Hartford Public High School community have wanted a place in the school that would display items from the school’s history. This idea has been fulfilled with the inclusion of an attractive museum and archive area in the renovations of the HPHS Forest Street building.
Along with this we should give a sense of continuity to the school by ensuring that there will always be people who will appreciate the school’s history and carry on the goals of the museum-archive for years to come. The “Friends of the HPHS Museum & Archive” has been established by the HPHS History Project Committee to provide this support.
In this way the school’s collection of oil paintings, photographs, documents, school records, antique books, antique science equipment, statuary, plaques, and furniture will be preserved for the future. Many of these items will be on display in the new museum area and in showcases and common areas of the new wing. The 1883 brownstone owl, for example, will be placed high in a niche within the new field house lobby. Two reproduction owls, modeled on the 1883 original, already grace the façade of the renovated building.
The goal of the “Friends” is to support the H.P.H.S. History Project in the following ways:
1. Save, preserve, and catalogue the historical and archival collections at the Hartford Public High School. These are sources for the study of the history of the school, the history of the city of Hartford, and the history of education in the state of Connecticut.
2. Preserve and display materials from the collections in the new museum area of the school.
3. Solicit new material relating to the history of the school.
4. Serve the alumni and public when they request information about the school and its collections.
5. Educate the faculty and students in the history of the school and its role in the history of Hartford.
6. Train students in the preservation and use of archival materials.
H.P.H.S History Project
55 Forest Street
Hartford, CT 06105
The Hartford public high school history project
The Hartford Public High School History Project began in 1995 as a result of the concerns which faculty members and alumni had for the iconographic, photographic, memorabilia, and archival collections at the school. The goals of the project were set in that year and are outlined on a separate sheet.
A committee was composed of the Principal, three active and three retired faculty members, and R.J. Luke Williams, who was head teacher of the Social Studies Department at the time. Mr. Williams chaired the committee and with help from volunteers transferred all archival material at the school to a central location in the school vault. Yearbooks, copies of the Owlet, bound copies of the Chronicle, scrapbooks, and memorabilia were found in the many closets, cabinets, and storage rooms of the school. Within 3 years all of the materials were inventoried
Ongoing inventory and preservation have been priorities of the Project since its inception. Much of the material had been in a state of neglect, even deterioration, for many years. It appeared that other day-to-day concerns of a large city high school had allowed its fine history to be ignored. Materials had to be sorted and arranged properly. For example, all unbound documents and manuscripts had to be taken out of cardboard boxes and paper bags and placed in polyester envelopes and acid-free storage boxes for better conservation.
Funding for the purchase of storage materials came initially from the H.P.H.S. office supply budget. As time went on, contributions came into the H.P.H.S. Archive Fund from alumni and other thoughtful persons in the school community. Another source of funds has been the sale of surplus yearbooks.
It is important to maintain ties with the large number of alumni, many of whom still live in the metropolitan area. Besides the sale of surplus yearbooks, one convenient way of reaching out to the alumni has been through class reunions. Mr. Williams has been a guest speaker at 32 class reunions. He speaks on the history of the school, its archival collections, and its plans for the future. Among the alumni are many who have made and continue to make great cultural, commercial, and intellectual contributions to their city, state, and nation.
There are six brownstone slabs containing dinosaur tracks and conifer fossils from the Triassic Period, approximately 200 million years ago. They were found in the Portland Quarry sometime in the 1850’s and were brought to Hartford where they were on display at the New England Granite Works for about thirty years.
James Goodwin Batterson, founder of the Travelers Insurance Company, donated the slabs to the Hartford Public High School, and a May 11, 1883 article in The Hartford Daily Times describes them at length. They were mounted in the second floor lobby of the Hopkins St. building designed by George Keller, and this building opened in that same year. Batterson’s daughter Emily, by the way, was a member of the Class of 1887.
When the Hopkins/Broad Sts. complex was demolished in 1963, the fossil slabs were removed to a storage shed behind the new Forest St. building. They remained there until 1995 when they were placed in the Great Court of the school. This was a terrible mistake because the slabs were exposed to the elements and the porous brownstone began to chip and flake.
Fortunately, The Hartford Financial Services Group approached the school with an offer to fund special projects at the school for $10,000. The administration asked the school archivist if there would be a suitable project, and the fossil showcase idea was born. Mr. Williams asked SD&D, Inc. of Newington to design three showcases to house the slabs in the ground floor landing of the main stairwell. Students in the honors World History I class were assigned the task of writing a booklet about the fossils and worked under the direction of Mr. Richard Krueger, Director of Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill. Mrs. Bazzano-Klotz directed the students of the Art Club to design a diorama of the Triassic Period dinosaurs whose tracks are in the fossil slabs. The result was a lovely showcase display of the fossil collection, which thanks again to The Hartford, was dedicated on May 4, 1998 at an evening ceremony with Dr. Donald C. Johanson, Director of the Institute of Human Origins in Tempe, Arizona, and a member of the Class of 1961 as guest speaker.
The fossil tracks are all negative tracks, which are natural casts of the positive tracks. The positive tracks were made when the animal stepped on soft mud, which left an impression of its foot. After the mud dried up, soft mud rippled into the positive track and formed the negative track. When the tracks became fossilized, positive and negative tracks of that dinosaur were formed. There are two dinosaurs represented by the tracks: Grallator tracks which are usually attributed to a small therapod such as coelophysis, a carnivore, and Otozoum tracks which are attributed to a prosauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur. Two of the slabs are fossilized conifer tree trunks of the same geological period.
In 1998 H.P.H.S. students in the classes of 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 produced a diorama showing in art form the dinosaurs that made the tracks. They also wrote a guidebook to the H.P.H.S. Fossil Collection which was printed with the compliments of The Hartford Financial Group, Inc.
Last Updated:
03/27/2008
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