The Good Will Club's Lost Building on Keney Tower Square
It stood next to Keney Tower from 1911 to 1964
Hartford’s Keney Memorial Clock Tower stands in a park at the corner of Main and Ely Streets. Just east of this park is a path that connects Ely Street to the Capitol Prep Magnet School, which is just to the south. East of the path is an area of lawn along Winthrop Street that is owned by the Hartford Public Works Department and has been vacant for many decades. From 1911 until 1964, this was the site of a building known as Keney Hall, which faced towards the tower and was the home of the Good Will Club.
Founded in 1880 by Mary Hall, Connecticut’s first female lawyer, the Good Will Club was created as a charity aimed at keeping the underprivileged boys of Hartford’s East Side off the streets by providing them with educational instruction, vocational training and social activities. For its first few years the Club lacked a permanent home. As a historical sketch that Hall presented at the 1911 building’s dedication described it, they were frequently “pushed out of place because we were noisy, never being able to secure permanent quarters.” Eventually, in 1888, the Club received word that the old Hartford Female Seminary building on Pratt Street was going up for sale. This had been the home of the school once run by Catherine Beecher, whose sister Harriet Beecher Stowe had also taught there for a time, many years before she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Club lacked the funds to purchase the building but, according to Hall:
This condition was reported to Mr. Henry Keney who at once entered actively into its purchase, sending his check to make the consummation of the purchase possible. Mr. Keney also directed that all needed repairs be made, a new heating apparatus installed, the crumbling walls braced, the roof made whole and the bills sent to him.
When the Good Will Club moved into the former Seminary building in 1889, it was renamed Keney Hall in honor of their wealthy patron, Henry Keney. He had made a fortune operating a successful grocery business with his brother Walter at the corner of Main and Ely streets. Four years after Henry Keney’s death, in 1898, the trustees of his estate erected the Keney Memorial Clock Tower on the site.
By 1910, the Good Will Club had outgrown the former Seminary building on Pratt Street. The Keney trustees then stepped in to erect a new and larger Keney Hall on a strip of land they acquired just northeast of the Keney Tower. The new building, which had the address of 25 Keney Tower Square, stood in the former backyard of a pair of tenement buildings that faced Winthrop Street. Its back was towards these buildings and its front faced towards the small park where Keney Tower stands. Dedicated in October 1911, the building was designed by the architectural firm of LaFarge & Morris of New York.
According to a description of the proposed structure that appeared in the Hartford Courant on September 16, 1910:
The building will be two and a half stories high, the half part being represented by a sloping slate roof. Somewhat to the right of the center will be the main entrance. The building will be of brick with light stone trimmings. It will have little ornamentation, except at the entrance. The entrance will have a Gothic archway with windows above of the same style. Surmounting the roof over the entrance will be a cupola.
A hall will go from the entrance the entire depth of the building. A long hallway, crossing this hall at right angles, will run the length of the building, its terminus on the Ely street side being the side entrance there. From these two hallways as thoroughfares the rooms will open. The superintendent’s quarters, consisting of living rooms, office and reception room, will be on the left hand side of the main entrance, on the first floor. The office will be near the Ely street entrance. There will be five classrooms on the first floor and the members’ room, running the entire depth of the building, will be on the end of the building which is opposite the Ely street end.
On the second floor the only hall will be one corresponding to the one from the main entrance on the first floor. The left half of the floor will be given up to the assembly room, and the right half of the floor will be given up to the gymnasium. In the basement there will be bowling alleys, rooms for printing, clay modeling, plumbing, carpentry work, basketball and shower baths.
The Good Will Club vacated the building in 1963 and merged with the Southwest Boys Club. The organization continues today as the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hartford, but its old building (along with the neighboring tenements) was demolished as part of the city’s Windsor Street redevelopment project, leaving Keney Tower and the former Barnard-Brown (now Capitol Prep Magnet) School as the only occupants of the area bound by Main, Pleasant, Winthrop and Ely Streets.