Signs of a comeback for once-'Gilded' Hartford

By most measures, the pig-tailed, corn-rowed kids in Mrs. Kelliher's second-grade class here don't have much to look forward to.

Their city - once a Gilded-Age insurance capital - has become one of America's most decrepit. If statistics hold true, just 2 of the 20 students in the class will graduate from college. Six will live in poverty, earning no more than $8,860 a year. Drug dealing and prostitution are common careers in the neighborhood.

Yet there are signs that a nascent rebirth is taking hold - from the river front to the city's classrooms:

• Student test scores across the city, while still low, have been rising for three years. The educational system has improved enough that the city will retake control of its 33 public schools this week - after losing control to the state in 1997. • Mayor Eddie Perez, the city's first Latino chief executive, has become one of the city's most admired politicians in decades. Last month, residents approved a plan to give the mayor broad powers in a move that may create a new sense of vitality at city hall.

• A mammoth construction project is underway on the Connecticut River's shore, where the multimillion-dollar Adriaen's Landing will echo other urban waterfront revivals. By 2005, a new convention center, mall-and-condo complex, and $75 million Marriott hotel will rise from the muddy shoreline pits.

With all the activity, Hartford stands as a test case for America's "forgotten" cities - those that even the '90s boom couldn't resurrect. While many rust-belt cities - St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, even Gary, Ind. - made gains, some urban areas in the Northeast didn't. Now, with the economy weak, a revival here would be particularly poignant and symbolic.

"What's going on in Hartford is very impressive," says Bruce Katz, an urban-revival expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Hartford is in a group of cities that "have lost traction in the economy and are burdened by a serious level of hyper-poverty and stress."

Indeed, data for the one-time home of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe is perhaps more worthy of Dickens. Hartford's population declined by 13 percent between 1990 and 2000. Forty-one percent of children live in poverty - a rate second only to Brownsville, Texas. Hartford has the highest percentage of households headed by women - 25 percent - and the second-lowest home-ownership rate, behind Newark, N.J.

The North End, one of Hartford's poorest areas, is home to Kelliher's kids at the Simpson-Waverly elementary school. Every child here gets free breakfast and lunch. Eighty-eight percent of the 328 children are black.

Yet the school's standardized test scores have skyrocketed. Between 1997 and 2001, the number of fourth graders who achieved reading mastery on the statewide test jumped from 13 percent to 56 percent. Several teachers here attribute the test-score jump to their ongoing training: A raft of consultants and specialists provide tips on improving teaching techniques.

Page: 1 | 2