| They Make a Difference The Hartford region is full of people who work hard to make our community a kinder, gentler, more livable place. Some you know. Some you don´t know. Here are a few people that we think deserve your attention, and thanks |
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By Patrick Rucker Matt Blood, President To look at Hartford through Matt Blood's eyes is to see a haunted city. Today's checkerboard of parking lots and buildings was once a thriving urban landscape of shopping districts, bustling housing quarters and a busy riverfront. Each fell in their time to progress. "The riverfront used to be immigrant neighborhoods and so it was the easiest to acquire when they built I-91," says Blood, 29, president of the Hartford Preservation Alliance. "Then I-84 severed the connective tissue of the city and it became completely disjointed." But Blood has no time to mourn. He's performing architectural triage sorting which buildings can be saved, which can be preserved, and which surely will be lost. The Hartford Preservation Alliance, incorporated as a nonprofit in 1998, is the city's architectural vigilante. After years of lobbying, the Alliance has won the right to be notified of all pending city demolitions. Often that only leaves time to register token opposition before a building is destroyed but it can also save a building from destruction. "It amazes me that the city is still leveling buildings after so much has been lost," Blood says. "But that is the battle everyday." |
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