Book excerpt: The gilded city of Hartford triumphantly returns in this volume, Victorian Hartford Revisited, a compilation of many never before published images of Victorian splendor and incredible architecture. The social, economic, cultural, and architectural center of the state went through unparalleled growth after the Civil War. Demand for new technology made Hartford not only the political capital but the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution in the region. Tremendous wealth accumulated and materialized in the form of extensive estates, historic parks, magnificent schools, churches, public buildings, grand hotels, and a multitude of immigrant housing. This once Colonial port city along the Connecticut River rose to epitomize Americas Victorian age, and it is captured within these impressive pages.