Historic Asylum Hill and West Middle Community School
Welcome to Asylum Hill, a compact neighborhood of soaring churches,international corporations, exquisite Victorian architectures, and historic landmarks. It is the neighborhood where Katherine Hepburn climbed trees and Mark Twain wrote some of the greatest works in American literature. Asylum Hill is also the start of the American dream for countless immigrants from all over the globe. Walk through the community garden off Niles Street on a summer morning and you will find all kinds of people tending crops from their homelands, whether they hail from Jamaica, Ghana, Myanmar or any one of several other nations. (from the Asylum Hill Neighborhood Association Guide)
The West Middle Community School building, a Victorian Gothic structure, was first built in 1873 and designed by Richard M. Upjohn a famous architect of his time. He designed or worked on buildings such as Trinity Church in New York City and Kingscote in Newport Rhode Island. Sadly, this original building was mostly demolished and a new building was built in 1930 which faces Asylum Avenue. In 2017 a new addition was added on the Niles Street Side to service the community. It is called West Middle School because it was the school located in the “West Middle District” prior to Hartford being a unified school district.