ABSTRACT
Riding down Main Street in East Hartford, Connecticut, toward the six
smokestacks dominating the front of Pratt & Whitney’s mammoth aircraft-
engine factory, one cannot help noticing numerous artifacts of industrial
decline: empty and trash-strewn lots, boarded-up storefronts, and vacated triple-
deckers, once homes for Pratt & Whitney workers. A short drive away on
the other side of the Connecticut River, one can observe the dichotomies
between East Hartford and downtown Hartford, with its glittering insurance
companies, banks, and the headquarters-known around Hartford as the
“Gold Building”—of Pratt’s parent, the United Technologies Corporation
(UTC). Our minitour makes apparent the economic uncertainty and painful
“pulling apart” of the social fabric in Hartford and the rest of the once-industrial
northeast United States’ older cities caused by the disappearance of well-paying
manufacturing jobs.
