One block of Pratt Street, between Main and Trumbull Streets in Downtown Hartford, makes up the Pratt Street Historic District, and you are on it. This is the only place in the city where the typical Early 20th-Century streetscape is retained. The block contains 15 buildings — eight on one side and seven on the other — modest in scale compared with surrounding streets, ranging from two to six stories.
Most of these buildings were built between 1896 and 1937 and reflect the commercial revival styles popular in that period. One building faces Trumbull Street, which sits across from the PeoplesBank Arena, anchoring this short but distinct corridor. The district’s history reaches back farther: all of the buildings were constructed between 1830 and 1928, and the 1830 Spencer House at 76-78 Pratt Street remains here as a two-story brick townhouse, a tangible reminder of the street’s residential origin.
The whole block was recognized and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Two stories here, six there, and among them the 1830 Spencer House at 76-78 Pratt Street, the brick townhouse that remembers when this block was a place to live.