339 Forbes Street, East Hartford (Central Valley)

Barn Record East Hartford

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Building Name (Common)

n/a

Building Name (Historic)

Phillips Family Farm

Address

339 Forbes Street, East Hartford

Typology

New England

Overview

Designations

n/a

Historic Significance

Insufficient data for inclusion in State Historic Resource Inventory. (TL)

Field Notes

This property has many outbuildings and an old farmhouse. The first is a large potato barn, constructed circa 1930s, of cinder blocks with a wooden roof and framing. Owner was available for comments and a tour. He indicated that the Phillips family owned this farm and had several different crops. For this reason, it is believed that one of the buildings on the site was an onion barn (see picture 339_ForbesSt_3). The owner gave a tour of the smaller building, which was full of tools, and had been converted to a work shed. The larger potato barn had many well-preserved examples of machinery from the past. These included an operational, electric-powered conveyor, potato scale, packing bag and some plows. An interesting note about this property: The owner said that the Phillips family were "East Hartford's first millionaires" according to what he was told. They added tobacco farming in the 1950s as it was very lucrative at the time. Behind this property is the Charter Oak Mall and Showcase Cinemas, which were all once owned by Phillips, but sold in the late 1960s or early '70s for these projects.

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