Time & Story: Aerial View Pratt Street Site With Quonsets To Weetamoo

“While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.” – Jane Jacobs

A brook runs beside this site, under a hallway of a structure that leads to another complex of buildings. Flowing water is important to life and business.

Walk around looking for one thing, discover something else. Aerial view detail of a structure behind 290 Pratt Street; note the Quonsets that appear in this image, City Park.

The snout of the building, seen in the aerial view detail. Imagining this spiffed up and humming with life as a community center, used bookstore, gathering place.

Quonsets in Meriden detail; use smokestack to orient location in larger image.

Quonset. Look up the origin of this word and, not surprised–“1942, from Quonset Point Naval Air Station, Rhode Island, where this type of structure was first built, in 1941. The place name is from a southern New England Algonquian language and perhaps means ‘small, long place,'” according to Online Etymology Dictionary.

From a bustling factory making vital components for machines to a quieter place now home to a variety of small business, entrepreneurs and yes, innovation. Offices in the front section; a hidden courtyard that await someone who sees its potential. Well-built homes stand as a border along Camp Street. The interstate hums with transportation above. Harbor Brook still flows, now into above ground through Meriden Green and beyond on its way to the Quinnipiac River, of which it is a tributary. Streams and rivers may be buried but if not engineered well, water will seek its own courses and not be ignored. Watersheds feed all layers of life. Mills and factories located near water that could be counted on to carry away wastes, dye, effluent once upon a time–and not so very long ago.

History is brutal, but should not be sanitized.

Read widely; not everything is online. A curated Twitter feed (editors, writers, scholars, authors, publishers; unique voices who are treasured. Horses, dogs, yes. Aerospace, local business, manufacturing, reporters, tech innovation, independent media, science, medicine, podcasts, gardens, wildlife, more) can help. Yet time spent in explorations around town yield fascinating stories of time, manufacturing, architecture. What was and what may be. A book that may provide insight or a destination is Connecticut, An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites by Matthew Roth, Bruce Clouette, Victor Darnell.

Industrial sites have left a legacy of sorts in not only what they made, but the solvents and such used before effects were known. Brownfields, the term used now to describe the knowledge of how long all combined lasts coupled to land, water, air. For a list of current project applications that include Connecticut via the EPA, visit this link.

Connecticut, An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. Author and project director, Matthew Roth; additional writing and research by Bruce Clouette and Victor Darnell.

Switching gears to circle back to Weetamoo and previous wanderings, here is another story link, more history that reveals context to the right now human happenings. To get some in-depth contrast (and much inspiration) visit Tantaquidgeon Museum in Uncasville, Connecticut. To read about this museum and a celebration of nine decades of keeping artifacts, stories, community and heritage, travel to that story, linked here.

Still thinking about mileage covered by original inhabitants of the continent. On foot. Using travois? Dogs power?

Dog moccasins with spaces for the nails. For those who have walked snow with a dog over long distances, these would be quite useful.

Read, write, return. At the counter of Pourings & Passages. Fintech device makes payment simple for small businesses and customers.

Main Street. A store draws readers like a magnet and adds to the community. Pourings & Passages, a used bookstore and coffeeshop in Danielson, Connecticut, offers rooms and rooms of books sorted by subject. A non-profit business equipped with electronic fintech device to accept all sorts of payments, to the delight of a cashless customer. All proceeds go to St. James School. Technology helps this small business endeavor and feeds into a community by its efforts.

“The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom.” Epicurus

Note: This story has been updated.